Crimson Tide
by Challos
Summary: A guy receives a letter from Beacon asking him to come out of the blue. He has no idea what's in for him. Rated T for violence and cursing.
1. Chapter 1 Crimson

**A/N: Thank you for reading, and make sure to leave feedback in the reviews below.**

Ozpin looked up from the dossier he had been inspecting on his Scroll.

"So this is the kid you were talking about, correct Qrow," he asked.

"Yep," a gruff reply came from the tall, bearded man leaning back in his chair with his foot on Ozpin's one-of-a-kind desk.

"Is he really that good? Skilled enough to beat the Nikos girl?"

Qrow kicked his feet up, landing with a crash back with all four chair legs on the floor. "I was surprised too, she was top of her class in Mistral, and won several tournaments. You'd never guess his Semblance just by watching him fight, unless you were paying attention since he's never used it in public."

Ozpin raised an eyebrow. "Well, what is it?"

"That would destroy all the fun Oz. Invite him to Beacon, trust me," laughed Qrow.

Ozpin sighed.

"Fine. And his name is?"

"Well, he calls himself Crimson. Beyond that, no one knows." Qrow raised his hands playfully, mocking mystery.

"He calls himself Crimson?"

Qrow huffed. "Apparently he really likes the color red. As for why he named himself Crimson… Well, that would still destroy the fun." Ozpin looked at Qrow with annoyance.

"Qrow, I've known you as a friend for years, and I employ you now to investigate my students when you're not teaching. So drop the mysterious act and tell me why." Qrow waggled his finger.

"Now, now, Oz, you may be my boss, but you're also my friend. This will turn out to be far more interesting. Trust me on this one."

"Fine, invite him to Beacon. Do whatever you please. I hope you have a good reason for not informing me of my student's history."

_Crimson's POV_

I heard a letter slip under the door. I looked at the time. _Still only 6:00? Man, mailmen deliver early. I don't know what it could be, I've already got the prize money from the tournaments._ I got out of my bed, nearly tripping over the metal rod I had stuck into the wall socket and picked up the letter. It had neat printing with the words, "Beacon Academy." I scratched my head, walking back over to my bed. _What the hell is Beacon Academy? It's probably spam, but it won't hurt to check._

I opened the letter, and pulled out the card. _Certainly some fancy spam. _It had, "Welcome to Beacon!" written on the front of it. _Definitely spam, but I'm curious now. _I opened the card further and read inside.

"You have been invited by Headmaster Ozpin to join the prestigious Beacon Academy, a school for gifted Huntsmen and Huntresses in training, on a full scholarship, all expenses paid." _Oh. _"Should you choose to come to Beacon, please come to the Mistral Airfield this Saturday before 8:00. The airship is scheduled to depart at 10:00. Make sure to bring all weapons that you use in combat, and remember to keep this card, as it doubles as your boarding ticket." _So this isn't some crappy school where I have to do Math huh? It seems kind of sketchy that someone would just randomly invite me, but what the hell; I'll go and see if this thing is real._

I grabbed my weapons Excalibur, and Gambit, and threaded Gambit through my jacket, getting off my bed. I went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. I'm relatively tall, standing at 5'10", and have black hair. I took my toothbrush out of its holder and brushed my teeth. I stretched after doing this, and went to my fridge. _I need more food, I think I need to win some more tournaments, _I thought, looking at my empty fridge. I sighed and pulled my scroll out of pocket, and looked up if there were any tournaments in an hour.

_So let's see, there's the amateur tournament for 100 lien, the intermediate for 1,000, and the expert for 10,000 lien. I don't want to bother with good fighters; I think I'll just go to the intermediate._ I pocketed my scroll, grabbing my wallet and keys off of a dresser. I exited my apartment and locked it with my key.

I walked through the streets of Mistral City, heading towards the arena. _The tournament starts in 10 minutes, so I should probably get there early. _It was nearing fall, but even then it was still must've been hovering around 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Fall was almost a forgotten concept in Mistral, and was more a slightly colder version of summer than anything, since none of the trees in Mistral ever dropped their leaves. I walked through a large archway that led next into a courtyard where several of the buildings for the arena stood.

"Hey, you're that kid that beat Pyrrha Nikos! You don't look so tough, let's fight right now!" Some random kid on the street told me. He was relatively small, probably standing at 5' flat with a fake tough guy kind of jacket and blond hair. _Seriously? When will they learn?_ I gave him a look which I hoped would get through his head, and make him realize that I was not going to bother fighting him.

"I'll put 1,000 lien down that I can beat you." He said, bringing out the money to prove his point. _Well now. I could beat him, and possibly go to that tournament, which would be more than enough for food and rent if I had both._

"Okay, if you're really sure." He smirked and drew a huge battle axe from his back. I drew Excalibur and charged at him. I used my ability and my perception of time slowed. I saw several ghosts jump out of my body, and leap into different possible position I could go.

_So I have a 90% chance of hitting him if I hit him from the right, 10% from the left, and a .01% chance if I go from above. Right it is. _I spun to the right and landed a solid hit on him, bringing him down to 50% of his Aura. He lurched forward and I hit him again, finishing him. He stood up, and swung his axe at me, trying to get a cheap hit on me. I ducked under the axe and came back up, putting my blade at his throat.

"I won, fair and square, now give me the money." He had a look of fear, and shakily gave me the money.

"Next time, please don't cheat and try to get a cheap swing on me. I don't want to hurt you more than necessary. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a tournament to go to."

I pulled my blade away from his neck, and sheathed it on my back, running towards the arena.

I hurried in and approached the signup desk. There was a woman sitting behind it, reading a book called, "Ninjas of Love". She was around the age of 25-30, with a black jacket and red hair with the book on her lap. _Seriously? Who would read THAT? Whatever._

"Hi I would like to sign up for the intermediate tournament." I said in a hurried voice. She didn't even bother to look up, and pointed to a clipboard with around two dozen names on it. I picked it up and the pen next to it and put my name, Crimson on it. I skimmed over the over names until I saw Pyrrha's name. _Why would she be in an intermediate tournament? I mean I COULD do expert, but I'm lazy and don't want to bother._

I gave her the clipboard back, and she put my name on a huge roster behind her. _So there are 20 people in the tournament? This could take a while._ I knew none of the other names on the roster, except for mine and Pyrrha's obviously. _So I'm up against someone named… Fred. Weird name. _I looked at the rest of the roster. _So to face Pyrrha, I need to win every single fight. And I need to fight her for the prize money in the finals. Should be fun. _I paid the 100 lien entrance fee and walked to where I needed to go.

The fights went without incident – for me, at least. I won each match in two or three hits and with only Excalibur, not even having to use Gambit. It finally reached the fight against Pyrrha. I sat down next to her as we waited for the arena to be reset for our fight.

"So, how are you today Pyrrha?"

"Just grand, what about you Cri?" She responded sarcastically.

**A/N: Pronounced Cry.**

"I'm good too, nice weather out isn't it." I said grinning.

"Cri, just stop, you don't need to keep gloating about you won against me ONE time. And besides, it will be _much_ different today." She said, agitated.

"You don't actually believe what you just said, do you?" I said sadly.

"Yes, I do. I know I can beat you." She said, even more agitated this time.

"Look, I'll make you a deal, you tell me what your Semblance is, if I win, and I'll tell you mine if you win since I wasn't able to figure it out during our past fight. Deal?"

Pyrrha eyed him suspiciously.

"What's in it for me since you're so eager to find out?"

"I'll give you 1000 lien out of my own pocket. You don't have to bet anything." She raised an eyebrow.

"You really win that many tournaments that you can stand to lose that kind of cash?"

"Not really, I'm just a very confident person." She shrugged and shook my hand, sealing the deal.

We walked to our respective sides of the arena and readied our weapons. There were several stone pillars scattered across the arena where the hours on a clock would be, but not much else in the arena except for dirt. A bell rung out to signal the start of the fight. I ran to the nearest pillar as did Pyrrha. I peeked around the pillar and used my ability. _From this distance, I have a 0% chance of hitting her without using my Semblance. Even with my Semblance it's still only a 10% chance. I need to get closer. _I to the next pillar in the circle as Pyrrha shot at me with her spear in rifle form.

I barely dodged them, rolling behind the next pillar. I peeked around yet again. _Still 0% chance? How close do I have to get? Or is her Semblance the reason that I can't hit her? _I face palmed, still having no idea at what her Semblance was or even close to what it did. _Well I could always just try to see what happens when I do it, might as well see. _I shot Gambit and I saw from the trajectory it was going to hit her. But then something odd happened: the end of the grapple gun curved slightly to the left, hitting the wall and falling to the ground instead of latching onto Pyrrha. She hadn't even tried dodging the attack and instead shot at me. _So that's her Semblance, control over magnetism? I can't say mine is totally different though. She's not using it flashily, and it would make sense that it's magnetism, since it was almost impossible to hit her during our first duel._

I used a little of my Semblance and reeled in Gambit, making it look as if a mechanism was pulling back my clawshot, turning it a slight red that no one except me most likely would've noticed.I ran to the next pillar and unsheathed Excalibur, again getting shot by Pyrrha. I chuckled to myself. _It's not her fault that none of them hit me. But if she keeps doing that I'm going to run out. _

I looked around the pillar. _Where did she go, I thought she was right the- _a shield bounced right next to my head and I saw Prryha behind me, with her hand outstretched about to catch the shield. _Holy crap that was fast, but if you mess with my weapons, I mess with yours. _I felt the electrons around me, using a small amount of my Semblance and activated my ability. _I guess it would make sense I can only change the direction a few degrees, but I would need to use my entire Semblance pool to get even close to a worthwhile change in direction. _I shot gambit instead and hit Pyrrha's shield while it was still flying towards her.

I pulled on it with Gambit and the shield resisted with more than just the normal force of it bouncing off an object. It stayed in mid-air for a second until Pyrrha released the shield with her Semblance and it flew towards my left hand as I felt the drain from my Semblance pool. When it reached my hand, I dropped it to the ground and launched Gambit again at her. This time she dodged it and grabbed it with her hand, pulling me forward. I fell forward on purpose, not even bother to resist as she continued to pull it dragging me towards her. _Wait for it. _I continued to be dragged, turning my red jacket into a slight brown from the dirt of the arena. _Almost there. _Pyrrha dragged me to her feet and I saw the spear rise to hit me with in one hand, as she held my chains in the other.

_Hope all of my Semblance pool is worth it. _I channeled all the electricity I had left into the chain and Pyrrha dropped her spear next to me, twitching slightly and falling to the gound with her Aura all the way down to 50%. I stood up and slashed her twice, bringing her aura down to 10% and ending the duel. I put a hand on her shoulder and took back the residue electricity from my previous shock. When she stopped twitching, I offered a hand to her. She took it grudgingly and stood up with my help. I shot Gambit at Pyrrha's shield a few dozen feet away and pulled it to me, handing it to her when it launched toward my hand.

"So, looks like I won." I said grinning as we walked towards the collection room so I could get my prize.

"Yes, Cri, you did." She said sighing and rolling her eyes.

"I hate that nickname; I don't know why you ever decided to give me that one. It's not even how part of my name is pronounced."

"It's because you're a CRYBABY Cri." She said laughing. I shook my head.

"That was weak Pyrrha. And I think I deserve to know what your Semblance is."

"How about we talk about it over lunch? Now that you seem to have just won 1000 lien, and because I have something else important to tell you."

"You're a mooch, but fine." I said, grabbing the money out of the winners box.

We walked towards a sandwich place I had frequently gone to known simply as, "The Sandwich Place". I'm pretty sure the owners had no imagination. I walked in and bought Pyrrha and I our sandwiches, while she waited at a table nearby. I walked back out a few minutes later, handing her sandwich to her.

"Weird choice of sandwich in my opinion, but whatever floats yer boat."

"It's not THAT weird Cri."

"It's a bacon lettuce tomato sandwich, WITHOUT any bacon. I got some weird looks when I asked for an LT sandwich. Most people ask for MORE bacon, not none." She shrugged and began to eat it.

"So I had the strangest thing happen to me, I got a letter to some place called Beacon Academy. I think it's spam and they tried to get to come go to Mistral Airfield in order to go. Letter looked nice though, I'll say that much."

She stopped mid chew as if she had seen a ghost.

"You… got invited to Beacon… as well?"

"Uh yeah. What's the big deal?"

"Well for one that's the same school I was invited to. Beacon is one of the best academies on Remnant. Only the best of the best go there."

"They chose very well then, going by their standards." I said sarcastically.

"I'll take that as a backhanded compliment, and how did you even get invited? I thought you didn't go to school anymore since you couldn't pay tuition?"

"I don't know how I got invited, and as for tuition… It's hard enough to get by on a source of money where you have to win every single time. I have a lot of money, but not enough to go to school."

"Then go to Beacon with me Cri! You'll get a free education, and free food!"

"Pyrrha, Pyrrha, Pyrrha, why didn't you say there was free food? I would've done it for that alone. Hell, I'll win 1000 tournaments to have free food for a while."

"That… was it? All I had to tell you was that there was free food?" She looked slightly dumbfounded, creating a strange effect with food still in her mouth. I shrugged.

"It's not like there's any reason for me not to go. I have no family, no actual job, and no friends. Why bother?"

Pyrrha looked slightly confused.

"You have no friends? None?"

"Well, I used to have one, Grey but he disappeared after a few years at the school… anyway, I'll come to Beacon. I didn't know that you wanted me to go so badly after I just won."

She gave me a slight smile.

"And what's your Semblance?" I said taking a bite out of my chicken sandwich. She sighed, and looked around for anyone who might be listening.

"I can control poles." She said quietly.

"That was not what I gathered from the fight, although that would make sense." I said, grinning and wiggling my eyebrows.

"Not THOSE kind of poles Cri, I'm talking about magnets."

"Ah, now that was what I guessed. Although having the ability to control poles would be a pretty cool Semblance." I said, thinking deeply about the possibilities.

"Just what do you think about all day Cri?" She said sarcastically.

"Is this a joke? I thought you would know me better after 2 fights and at least 3 lunches. I constantly think about the entire philosophy of the world, like why are we here, why do we do the things we do, and where can I go beat up some people for money?"

"That was a rhetorical question Cri."

"I know, that's why I answered it." I said with my mouth full of food. Pyrrha didn't seem to care, or if she did she didn't show it.

"So you're leaving for Beacon on Saturday too?" She asked me, and then took another bite out of her sandwich. I nodded, also taking another bite.

"I know I didn't win, but what's your Semblance?" Pyrrha asked mischievously.

"I'm not a sore winner, so I'll tell you. My Semblance is technically Electrokinesis, the control over electricity, although I can replicate the uses of other Semblances like yours, where I can create an electromagnet. It's very powerful, but the problem is I need to literally recharge after every fight if I use it." Pyrrha looked at me quizzically.

"I can regain a small amount of electricity by just waiting, but that takes two days do fully recharge me. It's much faster just to suck it out of something. Look, I'll show you." I got up and walked over to a street light, putting my hand on it. I felt the electrons flying up and down the light post and sucked them out, causing the light to flicker and die. This was a common occurrence in Mistral, so no one even batted an eye at it. I felt the electrons course through my fingers and go into my Semblance, recharging it to half.

I walked back over and sat down at the table, and continued to eat my delicious sandwich.

"Funnily enough, before the fight with you I have never used it that flashily. Most people don't know what my Semblance is, similar to yours and it gives me an advantage in fights if they don't know I have it. I suppose now half of Mistral could know what it is by now since I used it against you, but it was nice while it lasted." I said, and then finished off my sandwich. _I don't have to tell her about my ability since it's not part of my Semblance; it's not that useful anyway._

"Anyway, I should go get ready for the trip tomorrow. Where is Beacon anyway?" I asked her.

"It's near Vale, in the Kingdom of Vytal, so it's not close. I think the flight is close to 10 hours."

"That's pretty far; anyway I'll get going now. Bye, see you tomorrow." I said getting up and waving to her.

I walked back to my apartment and decided that I would order pizza. I went over to the electrical socket I had set up and put my hand on the metal rod sticking out of it. _That feels much better. _I began to feel more energetic as my Semblance charged, and then reached its max capacity. I removed my hand from it and looked at my options for dinner. _So I can either go out and get fast food, or I can just order pizza and stay here. Hmmm… The second option would allow me to take a nap. Pizza it is. _I pulled out my scroll and ordered pizza, scheduling it to come at 6 PM.

I didn't have much in my apartment, just a couple boxes of Wheato's, my Scroll charger, my Semblance charger, my weapons, and a few heavy duty batteries for emergencies that I could put in my jacket. _I can't believe I forgot these, I might have needed these. _I pulled out a suitcase from under my bed from under my bed and started to pack. It was a fairly large suitcase and I was able to fit everything I owned, except for Gambit and Excalibur.

_I hope they have Wheato's in Vale, but this should last me for a while if they don't. _I heard a knock at the door and I walked over to open it.

**A/N: And that is the end of the first chapter to this story.**

**Please make sure to leave a review below!**

**And credit to /u/RWBY_RPG_Maker for wanting credit for the clawshot and part of the Semblance.**

**Thanks to /u/-Falcyon- for editing. [Falcyon: You're very welcome!]**

**Here's the description for Crimson for later reference.**

**Name: Crimson Sera**

**Hair: Black**

**Eyes: Blue**

**White complexion, and usually wears a jacket to help him with his weapon Gambit and his Electricity Semblance by threading extra chain through his jacket and putting batteries inside of it to increase the effective pool of electricity he has.**

**Weapons: Gambit and Excalibur.**

**Excalibur: A red longsword that compacts to fit in his pocket, although he usually wears it on his back since it allows him to draw it faster. Nothing else of importance for the blade.**

**Gambit: A clawshot (if you don't know what that is I'll explain below this) that Crimson uses for many different things. One thing that he can use it for is pulling weapons away from his enemies, although success is based entirely on how strong he is. He can also pull himself towards objects if it latches onto something, although it's more used for pulling objects to him. Another use of it is the ability to channel electricity. This in itself has a broad spectrum of uses, but it is mainly used to damage enemies touching the chain when he does it, paralyzing and damaging them.**

**(A clawshot for those that don't know, is a grappling hook that is propelled by some force in games to reach somewhere higher, or go across a long pit. In this case it is propelled by either dust, or his Semblance, depending on which one he wants to use.)**

**Semblance: Electrokinesis. Can channel electricity and absorb it directly through his body with no repercussions.**

**Ability: For future reference, his ability has absolutely nothing to do with his Semblance. I will explain why he has it later. It allows him to see the chance of him completing something successfully, like hitting an opponent as well as slowing down his perception of time. The downside of it is that he has no idea why something might have an incredibly low or high chance of doing something. **

**Personality: Incredibly sarcastic, and forgiving of people. Gambler, in both games and real life, meaning that he would take a high risk, high reward scenario over a low risk, low reward scenario. Incredibly lazy as well. Reserved around new people, but much less so around people he knows (like Pyrrha) and jokes with them.**


	2. Chapter 2 All Expenses Paid

**A/N: Using an OC from my other FanFic. Don't worry; you don't have to read it to understand what will happen in the story. In fact, I would recommend not reading it until I reveal why Grey is helping Crimson.**

I answered the door to an old friend. Which was strange, seeing as he had disappeared a few years back from school.

"Grey? I thought you were gone." I said slightly dumbfounded. He was slightly taller than me, with grey hair. He had grown since I had seen him, since I had been the same size as him when we were in school. He was wearing his usual grey jacket that he had been wearing almost every day that I had seen him. He was actually pretty thin, from the little I had seen him out of his jacket years ago, but it was covered up by the baggy jacket.

"Hey Crimson, my boss just wanted to let you know that should be careful today, that's all." He walked to the right of my door and I poked my head out to see where my long lost friend had gone. _Where did he go?_ All that was right of my door was empty hallway, with the occasional apartment door plopped parallel along it. _That was weird as shit, I think I need to get some sleep. _I pulled my head back in, shutting the door and shaking my head in disbelief. I moved my suitcase off of my bed and onto the floor, and put my weapons on the nightstand next to it. I unthreaded the chain through my jacket and placed the chain next to Gambit. I finally took off my jacket and threw it on the still open suitcase. I jumped onto my bed spread eagle and immediately fell asleep.

I heard a knock at the door and looked at the time. _6 o'clock on the dot, I should get my wallet then. _I picked up my wallet and ran over to the door haphazardly, opening it.

"That'll be 20 lien sir." The delivery boy told me, holding out my pizza as well as a check and pen. I can't see his face, since it's obscured by his company's hat that read, "Pizza Pizza" on it, and he appeared to be about the same height as me. I took the check and pen, adding a 4 lien tip and signing the check with a sloppy, "C.S.". He nodded, still concealing his face and I traded the pizza for the check. He appeared to be of average height, and had blond hair sticking out of the sides of the sides of the hat.

"Thank you sir," He said, hurrying away. I twirled the pen in my right hand, still holding the pizza in my left. _Amateur, didn't even take his pen back. _I closed the door and sat the pizza on a table in the middle of my tiny kitchen. I opened the box and took in the smell. _Mmmm… Bacon. _Bacon has been my favorite type of pizza for as long as I could remember, and I ordered it whenever I had the option. I took the biggest piece in my left hand, and pulled out the backless chair under the table with my other hand, sitting on it.

I thought about what else I would have to do before leaving Mistral while eating the pizza slice in my hand. _I should probably send Copper the rent early, just to make sure I don't get on his bad side. Although that means I have to go to an ATM, and the only one around here is at the bank. At least it's only a few blocks away. Should finish this pizza first though, I don't like ice cold pizza. _I pulled out my scroll, and continued to read a book I had started yesterday, called Of Rice and Lien and was a book about how a man a business from the ground up from a single grain of rice.

The interesting part about the book was that it was a true story, or so it proclaimed and I'm pretty sure that some of the more 'interesting' scenes were made up. I finished off the slice of pizza, picking up another one and taking a bite out of it. _What do I consider Pyrrha now? _I thought while mindlessly reading the book and eating._ Should I consider her a friend now, since I've fought with her twice now, and talked with her several times? Nah, I barely know her at all, we have nothing in common except dueling._

I burped loudly and took another piece and started eating it. _I guess Beacon isn't a scam though, or it's an elaborate one at that if Pyrrha is going. I probably would've gone to school anyway if I had gotten enough money; I need a job since I won't always be able to do tournaments when I'm sick or older. I still don't know why they invited me though, even in school I was never a genius, or even exceptional. Was it my skill in combat? I guess I did win that tournament, even though they still put Pyrrha on the cereal box, and I can't blame them for that in all honesty even though I have stunningly good looks._

I had finished half the pizza, and I took my fourth piece. _So I need to pay the rent, and that should be it._ I scarfed down the next few pizza slices and got up, taking the empty pizza box with me. I stopped, remembering Grey's words. _Actually, I should take Excalibur and my batteries, just in case. _I walked back over to my nightstand and picked up Excalibur, shrinking it into a small metallic structure that would fit in my pocket, as well as picking up my batteries. I also picked up my keys and returned on my quest to go to the bank.

The streets were dense, but not enough that it was shoulder to shoulder. I was walking at a relatively leisurely pace with the street lamps illuminating the way. I whistled as I walked, with my hands in the pockets of my jacket. I turned the corner and saw the bank. It was a huge building, with large marble steps leading up to massive marble pillars that had the width of a large tree trunk. Even at a relatively late hour, the bank was still buzzing with activity. _Gotta love banks that open late, most of them would have been closed hours ago. _

I walked up the steps and went in. I headed up to one of the few ATMs that were unopened, and scanned my Citizen Card on the machine. "Welcome, MR. CRIMSON SERA, to Mistral National Bank! How may we help you today?" The machine asked me with a woman like robotic voice. I turned off the voice option, since it usually got on my nerves after using it awhile. A holographic touchscreen appeared in front of the machine and prompted me with several options. I prodded the 'deposit lien' option after searching for a second.

A small opening appeared on the machine, with several green arrows pointed at it. I took out my wallet, pulling out 1700 lien and depositing it in the machine. The words, "THANK YOU," appeared on the screen, and showed my overall balance of 1700. _I should probably work on my saving skills while I'm at Beacon, this is pathetic. _I sighed and exited out of the machine, pulling out my Scroll. I pushed a few of the buttons, and sent all of the money for the next two months of rent, along with a small explanation of why I was leaving to Copper in a Dustmail, as well as a small thank you at the end. _Nice guy for letting me have a month for free after THAT happened. _

I shuddered, thinking about it, as a dozen men with black ski caps on burst in through the door, shouting, "EVERYONE ON THE GROUND!" several times while motioning with their guns to encourage people to listen. _Well thanks for that Grey, would've had some problems if you hadn't told me. _I chuckled, and used my ability. _I have some batteries, so I can use a lot of my Semblance. And if that runs out, this place is bursting with electricity. _I saw the chances and mentally smiled. _These guys don't even have a chance. _I stopped my ability and pulled Excalibur out of my pocket, expanding it.

The security personnel were nowhere to be found as I walked towards the intruders. One of them saw me standing, and pointed his gun to ready firing at me. I pulled up my left hand and the robber fired for several seconds. There was a silence as he looked scared when he saw what I had done with the bullets. Every single one of the bullets he had fired at me hung in the middle of the air, suspended by my Semblance. I dropped them to the ground. _Used damn near a quarter of my Semblance pool, bastard. _I walked towards them, and quickly put my hand up as more of them fired at me.

I started drawing from batteries, which would equal about two full pools of my Semblance in electricity, and there was silence again as they all started to back up. I dropped the bullets, resulting in an even louder cacophony.

"You guys done yet?" I asked them sarcastically as they started to back up even faster. I heard police sirens and they looked as if they were a rat stuck in a corner, which in this case metaphorically, they were. I smiled and kneeled, sticking my sword into the ground. _People never get why I call this sword Excalibur. Guess this will show them why. _I channeled nearly all of my electricity into the blade, and I felt it pool inside the blade, trapped by the marble floor. Red arcs of electricity sparked around the blade and I pulled the sword out the ground and pointed it at the robbers. The guns of the robbers started to shake, and flew away from their hands towards my blade.

I sucked some of the electricity back from my blade and the guns flew towards me, landing on the ground harmlessly. _Never use metal objects around people who control metal AND have an iron sword. _The siren grew louder and I saw the police lights, even from all the way up here flashing. The robbers looked around panicked, now that they had lost their weapons. They kneeled on the ground with their hands up. I lowered my sword, and condensed it back down as the police barged through the doors.

They looked confused at the scene, with most of the people who witnessed it still in shock from the robbers barging in. I put my Excalibur in jacket pocket, as well as my hands and shrugged my shoulders, walking towards the officers. I walked past them, and turned around, saluting them like someone from the military. I saw them shake their heads, and continue on with the arresting of the robbers.

I closed my apartment door and locked it. _Today, I got invited to a world renowned school I've never heard of, beat up a kid, beat up another kid that I got paid for, had lunch with the second person I beat up, met my friend Grey that's been missing for three years, ate pizza, and stopped a bank robbery with twelve armed criminals, by myself. All in all, it's been a pretty normal day. _I reflected as I moved to my bed to get undressed.

I laid out the pair clothes I would use tomorrow on the dresser, and put my batteries in the suitcase. I set my alarm for 6 AM, and rolled onto the bed to fall asleep.

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP! My alarm informed me while I was sound asleep. I semi consciously slammed my hand on it and sucked out the electricity, making the beeps deeper and quieter. I groaned and stretched on my bed, lying still for a minute. _So today is the today I start at Beacon huh? It's been a while since I've gone to school. Jeez, I'm 16 too, so I should've gone to two more years in theory before going to an academy. _I stretched again, getting off my bed and into my bathroom.

I undressed and took a shower. _I can't think of anything else to do, so I should be good to go. _I stood in the shower for a few more minutes, and eventually turned off the water. I put on a towel and walked to the bathroom door.

"Hi Crimson." Grey said to me as I opened the door. He was sitting on the couch, holding a Scroll, not even bothering to look at me as he said his hellos. My mouth hung open, and I managed to form words.

"Hi, Grey… How did you get in here?" I asked him, looking around my room for anything that could be used to get inside.

"For God's sake man, get dressed!" I was taken aback.

"This is MY apartment, and I wasn't the one who broke in!"

"You're still standing there half naked I noticed." He said calmly, still not having turned around.

"Astute observation Captain Obvious, I just took a shower!" I waved my hands about, but quickly returned my hands to my towel as I realized it was going to fall without my help.

"Get your clothes on, I put them right in front of you Mr. Oblivious." He told me, still looking at his damned scroll. I looked down, and saw the clothes that I was going to wear on my ride to Beacon. I face palmed, and took the clothes into the bathroom, shutting the door. I quickly got dressed, and opened the door.

"There, much better. Now what did you want?" He said, standing up in front of the couch to face me.

"Well first off, how did you get in?" I asked him, walking towards the kitchen table.

"That's not important." He said immediately, shaking his head.

"Okay, well then why the hell are you here? Not that I'm not glad to see you, I just don't know why you had to do break into my apartment to do this." I said gesturing at him next to the couch.

"Well I see you listened to my advice and brought Excalibur, as well as your batteries, so I'll tell you." He said, pocketing his scroll.

"How do you even know the name of my- you know what, fine." I said, throwing my hands up into the air as I brought the kitchen chair next to the couch. "Why are you here? Last time you said your 'boss' sent you." He nodded.

"My boss did send me that time, now I'm telling you as a friend. You will encounter someone known Roman Torchwick. He's a bad guy with a cane that works for an organization known as the White Fang under a woman known as Cinder. Stop him at every chance you have, and do not trust anything he says. And by the way…" He said, walking over to the door and opening it.

"Good luck Crimson." He said, turning his head, to look at me. He walked through the door and shut it behind him. _Well that explained a lot. I certainly feel informed about what the hell is going on right now. Cryptic asshole. _I put the kitchen chair back and looked at the time. It was 6:45. I rubbed my temples and put Gambit into my left jacket pocket, as well as Excalibur in my right. I zipped up my suitcase, and pulled it out the door with me. I locked the door with my key, and then slid them under the door, making sure no one could reach them.

The airport was bustling as I got out of my cabbie and thanked him. I pulled my suitcase out of the car and onto the ground, extending the handle. I walked through the automatic sliding doors, and into the airport. I pulled the letter out of jacket pocket and looked at it. I turned it overread, "For those of you who can't find it, there's a gigantic sign that says 'Beacon Academy' on it." I looked around and saw the sign over a doorway. _I have no idea how I missed that. _I walked through the doorway and entered the room behind it.

A gruff man with black hair and a beard was sitting on a chair with his feet propped up on a table, reading an old fashioned newspaper. He put his feet on the ground and threw the newspaper on the table.

"Why you must be Mr. Sera!" he said, appearing next to me, and putting a hand around me. I jumped. He was much taller than he had appeared sitting down, and eclipsed me.

"Uh yeah, I am. And you are?" I asked him, trailing off and removing his hand from my shoulder. He looked crestfallen for a second, and then brightened up again.

"I am Qrow, the person who recommended you to Oz to get a free scholarship to Beacon." He said teleporting back to the table to sit with a serious look on his face.

"So… you scout people to join Beacon Academy?" I asked confused. He laughed heartily and teleported to a window looking out of the room at the many bullheads used at the airport.

"Yes, although I am not a teacher there. I simply help my friend Oz to find suitable candidates for Hunters and Huntresses. My job is actually as a teacher at a school known as Signal, the combat school feeding into Beacon. I don't usually to meet them like you, but you were a 'special' case." He said, turning around to face me. "What happened is horrible, simply horrible. Mother and father died in the… accident." He said, opting to walk back to his chair than teleport again, looking solemn.

_He knows? I can barely remember it and I was there. Still…_

"So we're leaving soon right?" I said quickly changing the subject.

"Yes, we will be leaving with a Ms. Nikos with us as well on the ride." He said thoughtfully.

"Is anyone else on the Bullhead going Beacon with us?" I asked him, curious. He pulled out his Scroll and looked at something on it.

"Nope, you, and Ms. Nikos, are the only ones that were invited to Beacon, as it's mainly fed from Vytal, not Mistral." He said, putting his Scroll away. I nodded and sat down in a chair across from him, and pulled out my Scroll to play Solitaire. We sat in silence for an hour with me playing Solitaire and occasionally checking Dusttit, and him looking at his newspaper. The door opened behind me and I saw Pyrrha standing in the doorway with her suitcase.

"Hello Mr. Qrow, hello Cri." She said cheerily. I waved at her and I returned to my intense game of Solitaire. I feel as if I could hear her eyes rolling behind me as I played my game. She sat down in a chair next to me and waited, also pulling out her Scroll. My curiosity got the best out of me a half an hour later and I looked over at it.

"You're reading the NEWS? People actually DO that?!" I asked her incredulously.

"Cri, it is vital to know what is happening in Remnant, what if something actually important happens? Besides, doesn't Dusttit have a news section?" She asked me annoyed. I snorted.

"Well when they put something important on the news, be sure to tell me." I told her sarcastically. She looked at me exasperated and I chuckled at my joke, returning to my game.

"Alright kiddos, time to go." Qrow told us, causing me to look up and see him teleport to the door. I got up and carried my luggage, following him out the door.

The Bullhead was nice in my opinion, but I didn't have much to compare it to, since I had never flown on a bullhead before. It was apparently a smaller, private model, so that probably contributed to how nice it was. We were given snacks to eat on the flight, and I slept during most of it. I played Solitaire for the other parts of the flight, trying not to distract any of the other passengers on the flight, even though I was in my own row in first class.

"We are about to touch down in Vacuo International, please prepare to land." The young female flight attendant said over the PA. _WHAT?_

"Shirley, stop messing with the captives- I mean passengers. We're landing in Vale International Airport, guys." A second voice, presumably one of the pilots told the flight attendant. I shook my head and sighed. _Scared the crap out of me for a second. _I stretched as we landed on the ground, barely even shaking the aircraft. The lights turned on, and I saw other people also stretching and getting up from their seats.

"Thank you for flying Royal International! We hope you have a pleasant day!" The attendant said over the PA. I got up and pulled my luggage out of the overhead compartment, extending the handle and pulling it behind me. Pyrrha had been sitting a few rows across, and told me enthusiastically, "Well that was a splendid flight!" _How is she always so enthusiastic about everything? Literally all we did was sit on our butts for 9 hours. _

"Whatever makes you happy Pyrrha." I said smiling. She blushed.

"You're just like me when I was a kid Crimson." Qrow said teleporting behind me and looking regal. "Handsome, dashing… a ladies man." He said mischievously. _I think this is the most immature person I have ever seen. _I face palmed as Pyrrha reddened even more. I walked out of the bullhead, dragging my luggage. Qrow laughed behind me, and I heard Pyrrha catching up to me with hurried footsteps, passing me with an even redder face.

The first thing that I noticed was that there was no trees, which was strange because back on Mistral there were always a few trees scattered around, even though it was an enormous city. All the buildings also seemed to be smaller on average, although I had only walked ten feet out of the airport. It was dark out, which was also strange to me since in Mistral it was light out until the small hours of the night, and it was only around 7 o'clock.

"Alright my younger friends!" Qrow said breaking the silence, teleporting in front of us, and looking out into the city. "Sadly Beacon is not open tonight, since the school is opening tomorrow. So, we are staying at a 5 star hotel! Woo hoo! And we don't have to pay! Hooray for all expenses paid trips." Pyrrha and I shared a look of 'seriously?' and followed his trail of enthusiasm.

"Well I thought he was joking, but now I see that he was serious." I said, impressed with the hotel's quality. "I wasn't exactly impressed when I first saw this place, but I can safely say this is on par with Mistral's buildings." I stroked my imaginary goatee.

"This is a grand hotel! I have been in many different ones for tournaments, but this is surely the best I have ever been to!" I chuckled at her words and followed Qrow up the stairs towards our room. "I got us three rooms, right next to each other so that I can make sure that you two aren't doing anything bad." He said, chuckling to himself, and handing us our key cards. He then disappeared, presumably into his room.

"Night Pyrrha." I said, walking to my room and swiping the card.

"Good night Cri." She said, apparently unaffected by Qrow's words, also walking to her room. I pulled my luggage into the room, and looked around. I was slightly stunned with how nice it was. It wasn't that my own previous apartment had been particularly low by my standards; it was just that this one was so much nicer. I put my luggage next to my bed, and unpacked._ I need to recharge my batteries anyway. _I plugged my batteries into the wall with its extendable prongs, since they were more of a pack than singular units and were all connected. I then plugged in my Semblance charger into the outlet below it, and recharged, literally. _Well crap, I can't go to sleep energized like this._ I looked at the clock next to the bed and it read that it was 7:30 PM. _I should explore around town anyway, since I'm going to be living here for the next couple years._ I got up, and walked to the door, opening it.

**A/N: Alright, that's the end of Chapter 2, thanks to /u/-Falcyon- for editing.**

**Also, this chapter won't adhere to the schedule that I've come up with of uploading a chapter every 2-4 days, since I'm break as of writing this now, and had insane amounts of free time. Thanks for reading guys, and make sure to leave feedback in a review!**


	3. Chapter 3 Advanced Unintentional Physics

**A/N: Nothing much to say, other than I'm going to post a one shot in a couple of hours that someone requested, where Jaune fights someone else, and neither of them are allowed to use their Semblances.**

**And /u/-Falcyon- is awesome.**

I walked through the door, whistling one of my favorite songs, This Will Be the Day by Jeff Williams. _Surprising more people don't know about his music, there was only one other person I've seen on Dustit that knows him. It's sad really. _Thinking about several other indie studios as I walked down the stairs and across the sparkling floor, across the doors and out into the night. There were several different shops and other buildings that I saw, from book shops, to cafes, and all manner of fast food restaurants. A few of the more interesting ones that I saw I walked into, and moved on fairly quickly past most of them.

That was at least, until I reached the Dust shop. It had the name of, "From Dust till Dawn". _They don't have many Dust shops in Mistral and I've never really been in one, I should go check it out. _I walked inside, jingling the bell attached to it. There was an old grey man standing behind the counter and he nodded to me as I looked around the shop. _So this is what a Dust shop looks like, I use batteries for Gambit, though I have been considering adding dust capabilities to it. _I walked around the shop, looking at all the different kinds of dust crystals and powder. I heard the bell jingle again and I saw several people wearing orange sunglasses walking in.

The last man that walked in had bowler hat covering generous amount of orange hair, with a white suit, and a cane to complete his attire. _Orange hair? Who does that? _I couldn't hear him talking, but I saw several guns and swords come out. _Another robbery?! Twice in two days? That's an average of one a day!_ I quietly took Excalibur out and quickly threaded Gambit through my jacket. I saw one of them trying to mug a girl in a red hood across the shop. Even across the shop I could hear the music. _Hey that's Jeff Williams! I should probably ask her about that later though, after I stop these guys._

I was about to yell when she kicked the goon into a rack of glass bottles sitting just under the window with a crash. As I prepared once more for combat with some other lackeys, the hooded girl launched into the air, carrying another henchman in front of her and riding him like a body board through the air. I heard a window shatter and all of the grunts stood still in shock.

"Well, get her!" Bowler Hat Guy yelled, pointing his cane, presumably at the girl. I expanded Excalibur and ran stealthily behind the orange haired man. I pulled my sword around his neck and he visibly stiffened at my action.

"Idiots, I told them to clear out the shop. They aren't worth a penny." The man said as the girl finished mopping the asphalt quite literally with the grunts. "And this, Red, and… other guy… is where we part ways." Before I had time to react, an explosion happened below my feet, temporarily blinding me. I fell flat on my butt, with my head spinning. My vision cleared and I saw the man climbing up the ladder to a roof, with the girl following him with a massive red scythe. _THAT is a BIG gardening tool. I should probably help her stop him though, and get up. _I got up and dusted myself off. I ran to the ladder and started climbing. I heard the engines of a Bullhead and quickened my climb.

I reached a hand up and pulled myself up. I saw the man with orange hair jump onto the Bullhead smiling at the girl. I got up just in time to see him throw a red dust crystal at the girl's feet. _Oh shit. She is not going to have a good day if that hits her. _The girl stepped back, surprised at the move, and the ridiculous looking criminal raised his cane and shot a flare from the end, straight at the dust crystal near the scythe wielder.

A smoke cloud formed around her from the explosion, and I couldn't see if she was okay or not. _I need to catch this guy, especially if he hurt that girl. _I started a run towards the VTOL across the rooftop and saw that there was a woman, standing in front of the girl with a huge glyph in front of her that apparently blocked the two from harm. She was of average height, with blond hair and glasses, wearing a white, low cut business blouse showing off her ample cleavage and a tight black skirt, holding a whip in her right hand. _Phew, thought the girl in red was a goner. _I reached near the edge of the rooftop and the blond woman shot some kind of arcane bolts at the Bullhead, causing it to tremble in the air.

I looked over to the women and yelled, "Stop hitting it, I'll take it down!" she looked puzzled, but nodded and stood back. _I'm going to need a lot of electricity for this. _I stabbed Excalibur into the ground and looked around me for power sources. _What a handy dandy neon sign, only 10 feet away no less. _I reached a hand out to it, and sucked all the electricity from it causing it to sputter and die as the electricity traveled to my hand in red arcs from the sign. I felt my Semblance overcharge, and heard a whine in my ear as I saw red sparks dance on my hands. I need to this q_uickly; I can't let that happen again._

I grabbed the hilt of the sword and charged it, directing the magnet towards the aircraft. The sword shimmied for a second, and then flew out of the rooftop. _I did not think this through. _I quickly launched Gambit at it and amazingly hit it. _I was not expecting to hit that. _I was proud of myself for hitting it, at least until I was pulled off the rooftop. I was quite literally suspended in mid-air with my sword now sticking into the craft, looking to the entire world like an enormous uvula hanging off the VTOL. I started to climb up the chain of Gambit towards my sword. _I should not have done this. _The craft started to rise in altitude as I reached my sword.

_Could be worse, they could try and shake you off now. _The craft started to jerk around, trying to shake me off. _FUCK!_ I cursed silently as I was condemned by the universe and held on tighter. I saw the ledge where Roman had been standing still open and clambered onto it; draining my sword of its electricity and bringing my Semblance pool back to full, as well as spraying some sort of incredibly cold liquid all over Gambit and Excalibur, breaking Gambit in half. It fell into the darkness of the night, but I stopped watching it fall when I saw a cane coming towards my face, barely managing to block it with my sword.

"Persistent." The man said, gritting his teeth as I pushed against his cane.

"This is payback you prick, you nearly blew me up!" I said yelling into his face and hitting in the stomach with Gambit. I sent all of my electricity through it and he twitched, falling to the floor of the Bullhead. I stepped over him and saw a woman sitting at the controls of the aircraft as we flew away from the city. Her face was obscured, but I saw that she was wearing a red dress and heels. She turned around with her face still obscured by the shadows and sent a fireball at me. _Wait, what? A woman named Cinder, and guy named Greek Candlestick or something with cane. The guy with the cane is right there, and I'm pretty sure having the name Cinder qualifies you to have a Semblance dealing with fire. These are the guys that Grey warned me about!_

I bent my knees, and dropped as if I was suddenly deciding to go for gold in a limbo competition, letting the fireball hit the side of the craft and set it on fire. _While that was REALLY cool, I should exit. _I growled at the woman, and had a lightbulb moment. I poked my head outside the craft and saw that there was water below us. I smiled and latched my right hand on the craft, laying my sword on the ground next to me, and concentrated. _Most of these things run on dust, but there're usually backup electricity systems to make sure that they work in the event of an emergency. There! _I absorbed the electricity and the craft's engines sputtered. The Bullhead fell like a rock, with me and the criminals still inside. _I REALLY need to plan things out, maybe take some classes, possibly an entire_

I overcharged once again and felt my power over the electricity wane. I picked up my sword and kissed the hilt sentimentally. _You were a great sword, do your job. _I put the extra electricity I had, which was almost an entire Semblance pools worth of it into the sword, making it spark madly across the cold surface of the blade, and threw it down into the dark night.

"Good luck." I said, saluting, to the pair and taking back the electricity I had put into Roman. I jumped out of the Bullhead, and saw the aircraft plummet below me an. _I may have just killed two people. I feel kind of bad; I've never technically killed anyone on purpose. _I spread my arms and my jacket fluttered around me, with the chains jangling around nosily. _I guess the dampener fell off when I jumped; this thing is so noisy without it. _I used the extra electricity and searched for my electrified sword. _And…. There._ I took off my jacket and kneeled on it, electrifying the chains in it with almost my entire Semblance Pool, pulling me faster towards the sword.

_I have to do it right before me and the sword hit the water, or else I'm going to be a pancake. _I slowed time with my ability and watched as I plummeted towards the water. _3,2,1, NOW. _I polarized my jacket right before me or Excalibur hit the water, and I felt a couple of ribs break from the impact and groaned in pain. I was stuck in mid-air for a second before my sword hit the water, losing all of its charge, and seeing as I couldn't fly, I plummeted once again towards the water.

I felt the cold embrace of water as it slapped me, waking me up from the pain I had been in only moments ago. I sunk a few feet, and madly came to the surface for air, coughing up water. I couldn't believe that the only part of the plan that I had actually thought of, worked. I saw the arcs of electricity still fading from the sword and my jacket hitting the water, dancing lightly across the surface as I treaded and managed to stay afloat, coughing. _Well this sucks; I just broke some ribs, and lost all my weapons. Gambit can't stand more than a few feet of water, and I just lost my only sword. Wonderful. My jacket will probably be unrecognizable if I ever do get it out. _I swam to the shore, which was conveniently only a couple hundred feet from where I landed.

**A/N: For those that didn't understand what just happened, what Crimson did essentially was put two magnets of the same polarization against each other, causing them to repel one another. Excalibur and Gambit were charged up with so much electricity they briefly became superconductors and temporarily quantum locked, which is controlled by Crimson, despite his only partial understanding of what was happening (There are some interesting videos on YouTube on the subject of quantum locking. I highly suggest you, the reader, look it up. It's pretty cool! – From Falcyon, the editor). This means that instead of falling from a few THOUSAND feet, he was able to stop his fall relatively easily by magnetizing two objects, and taking the slightly less deadly way to stop his fall other than water. He was able to in this story cut down the several thousand feet fall, to a two hundred feet fall, which is survivable, even in real life without stuff like Aura.**

I climbed on the shore and looked back sadly towards the Bullhead wreckage and my jacket, and weapons. _Maybe I can try and get Excalibur back tomorrow, but I doubt that I'll be able to find it in that deep of water._ I coughed up water again and picked myself up, walking towards the lighted city holding my ribs.

I walked across the hotel floor, still damp and trailing water. _Bastards, I loved those weapons and that jacket. I almost hope they died, almost… _No one stopped me, probably because I had a look of anger on my face that would kill a baby of Ursa outright just by looking at it at the moment. I walked up the stairs with my shoes squishing and walked up to my door, resting my head on it. _Aura's nice though, heals broken bones in half an hour. _

I pulled my card out of my damp pants. _Stupid water, drains my Semblance too and stops me from even seeing anything with my electricity vision. _I unlocked the door and went inside. I shut the door and immediately stripped off my clothes, hanging them in the bathroom to dry. I went over to a drawer where I had put my clothes and pulled out pajamas. They were red themed, as were most of my clothes and I've had them for several years.

"So you lost your weapons and jacket, such a shame." A cryptic bastard said behind me, causing me to jump. He's sitting on a chair looking at his Scroll. "Luckily for you, my boss is a nice person and wanted me to give you these." He said, pointing to a pile of stuff.

"Christ Grey, could you not appear in my room like that?! Normal people KNOCK." I said, walking over to the pile to examine it.

"Good thing I'm not a normal person." he said chuckling. "My boss said these weapons would suit you nicely, given your Semblance and... ability." I stopped cold. _How does he know about that?! I've never told anyone, and it's not really something you can see like my Semblance._ I didn't answer his blatant exposing of my secret and instead walked over to the case, opening it.

_Whoa. _Inside was a red katana sheath, as well as a red jacket that looked strikingly similar to the one at the bottom of the lake. I picked up the katana and unsheathed it. The blade had strands of lightning in red across the blue blade, causing a weird eye popping effect.

I examined it with the little Semblance pool I had built up walking to the apartment. _Again, whoa. _Inside the blade appeared to be a complex electrical system, stretching all the way down to the handle where there was a battery.

Grey finally looked up from his Scroll. "Whenever you hit someone, it charges the kinetic battery in the handle. For whatever strange reason, it doesn't charge when you hit something other than people, but I've never figured out why." He said, shrugging.

"Cool, but what do these buttons do?" I asked him, pointing to the buttons on the handle and pommel. He shrugged, smiling.

"Try them out." _Life would be so much easier if people just DIRECTLY told me things. _I pressed the button on the hilt. The middle of the gun split apart, creating a crevice through the middle of the blade. A handle and trigger flipped out of the handle covering my hand, and the blade rotated 80 degrees to a comfortable position for holding a gun, finally putting a small stock to hold with my other hand

"Uh... well I pressed it. I still don't understand what it is." I said, holding it in both hands.

"It's a rail gun, with infinite ammo."

"Enlighten me Grey, what the fuck is a rail gun?"

He sighed and walked past me, towards the window. "A railgun is a weapon designed to shoot something magnetic using electromagnetic pulses at extremely high velocity. It can shoot any type of Dust bullet, as well as anything that can fit between the blades of the sword that is magnetic. It can also shoot a massive burst lightning, but that requires the entire battery of the blade and I don't recommend using it if you aren't really sure. So just stick to the smaller bolts of lightning now."

I raised an eyebrow. "While I may not have been the best at school, I'm still pretty sure that physics work, proved around half an hour ago. So how does shooting electricity work?" He sighed as if I was an idiot.

"Do I really have to go into theoretical and quantum physics right now Crimson? Or can you just accept that it shoots lightning and move on?"

"How did your boss get a hold of this? And for that matter how did he know that the bank was going to be robbed, or that apparently some guy is going to lie to me about SOMETHING." I said, annoyed at his cryptic talking.

"Look, you can still get your sword Excalibur back, just look for it in the lake. You'll find it. As for your clawshot and jacket, well… let's just say that they're both ruined. And by the way," He said, opening the window and letting in a cold breeze.

"Roman and Cinder didn't die in the crash. Have fun!" He saluted and jumped out the window, which shut behind him. I looked down at the rest of the pile, and picked up the jacket in my left hand. It was like my other one, but didn't have the capability of threading chains through it. It was also a slightly darker red than my other one, and looked like a better fit, since the one currently in the lake was… not originally bought for me. A hood was attached to it, which was nice since my previous hadn't and it had been irking me for years.

I hung up the jacket on a nearby coat rack, and put the katana back in its scabbard, making a nice "_shing" _noise as it slid in. I laid on my bed for a second and put my arms behind my back, thinking about the day's previous events. _So that girl… I need to see if I can find her again. She's the only other person I've seen listen to Jeff William's music. Nice scythe as well, should ask her how she made that. _I looked at the clock, and it read that it was half past eleven.

I jumped up from my bed and opened the door.

"Who were you talking to my young friend? I heard another man in here, but I'm pretty sure you don't sway that way, but you never know, they can hide in plain sight." Qrow said shrugging. _Uh…_

"It's fine if you are, although I am curious why your jacket is different." He said, teleporting over to my jacket on the coat rack, picking it up and examining it. "And I don't remember you having a sword like this," pointing to my new katana, "I could've sworn that you put it in your pocket when you didn't use it. And well… you don't have any pockets and I don't see it." _He figured that out in 10 seconds. I'm impressed._

I rubbed the back of my neck and laughed nervously. "Well you see-"

"YOU DIDN'T ROB SOMEONE DID YOU?" he said, teleporting next to my face, scratching my chin with his bushy beard. _Alright, I take it back, not just normal people knock on doors. _I decided to mess with him.

"Yes, yes I did." I said sarcastically, rolling my eyes and putting up my hands. "You caught me red handed, truly, you are the most brilliant detective I have ever seen." He looked triumphant for a second, then realized I was fucking with him. His face turned to anger.

"FINE! How did you get these then?!" he exclaimed, pointing at first to my coat, and then to my katana.

"Sit down, it'll be a minute," I said sighing, shutting the door and moving over to the couch.

"… and that's why I have this sword, and that jacket now," I finished.

"So let me get this straight, you tried to anchor a BULLHEAD with a SWORD STUCK INTO A ROOFTOP? Mom always said _I_ was insane, but apparently she never met you." _Do NOT take advantage Crimson, just let it pass. Even though it's a golden opportunity…_ I withheld my comment and he continued.

"And then you managed to catch your sword flying towards the Bullhead with your grappling hook, which I'll admit is impressive, but then you somehow managed not to fall off after being pulled off the rooftop? I feel like you need to plan better."

"Well… yeah." I said defeated.

"And THEN you jumped out of the Bullhead, after your sword which you THREW out of it on PURPOSE!? Am I getting this right?" He asked rhetorically. I nodded. "You then used your jacket full of chains for your grappling hook to cushion your fall using electromagnets? I can't say it's practical, but you're obviously not dead so it must have worked somehow. And you lost your jacket, sword, and grappling hook all in one go?" He asked, finishing his rant. I nodded sadly, and then remembered Grey's words.

"Although my friend that was just with me told me that I could possibly get the sword from the water, so I might be able to get that back at the very least."

"We'll get Ms. Nikos to help you; she does have the Semblance of magnetism. I'm sure that she can help you find it in the morning." The gruff man said with a serious look on his face. "Well, good night my friend." Qrow disappeared to his room. I walked over to my bed and looked at the clock again. _Midnight already, I should go to sleep_. I fell asleep almost instantly.

There was a knock at the door. I creaked open my eyes at the clock. _7:00? I guess I should be awake now. _I got up and answered the door. Pyrrha stood behind it looking anxious.

"Oh are you not packed yet, Cri? It doesn't matter all that much, but I heard from Mr. Qrow how you lost your sword, and wanted me to help you find it." She said casually. I nodded, and said, "Yeah, it's pretty crappy. I'll be a minute, let me get dressed, eat, and then we'll go look for my sword, okay?" I asked groggily.

"Yes, that should be excellent!" She said jubilantly. I closed the door and shook my head. _I will never understand women. _I quickly got dressed, putting on my new jacket and my katana on my left hip, along with my batteries now fully charged in my left pocket. I opened the door and Pyrrha was still standing there, again anxious. She brightened as I smiled and I motioned for her to come down for breakfast.

The hotel featured a continental breakfast that would put most buffets to shame. I got a plate and went across the line, filling my plate with bacon, eggs, and then more bacon. I sat down and waited for Qrow and Pyrrha. Pyrrha arrived shortly after, with a crap ton of fruit on her plate, along with a meager amount of eggs.

"I still don't understand why you don't like bacon." I said, eating some of it to prove my point. She sat down, eating her fruit with a fork to prove her respective point.

"Bacon is not only unhealthy, the way they slaughter the pigs is inhumane!" She said as if she had rehearsed it a million times. _Dear God, please not this rant. _

"Before you go off on me, I never said they slaughtered the pigs humanely, and I must say they are DELICOUS. Whether or not their deaths are humane. So I will continue to eat bacon, because it tastes good and I seriously doubt two people would ever be able to stop a huge corporation." I said, taking another piece.

"So you aren't even going to bother?" She said almost angrily in a whisper. _I shall now refer to my earlier thought._

"How about this, all big corporations are bad evil people that are only in it for money. And they like to kill cute innocent pigs. Happy?" I said sarcastically. I saw her open her mouth for a retort, and then Qrow sat down next to me.

"SO my friends, how has your day been so far? Excellent in each other's company?" He said laying down a plate filled to the brim with bacon.

"Good, and might I just say the bacon is DELICOUS today, right Pyrrha?" I said grinning.

"Yes! I had several strips in the line and they are simply excellent!" He said loudly. He moved a hand over his mouth and whispered, asking me, "But what's wrong with Pyrrha? It looks almost as if someone tried to argue about her opinions and will get their ass kicked soon."

"She's salty about bacon, which is funny to me because I'm pretty sure that the eggs and fruit are genetically modified." I whispered back to him, pointing at her plate.

She raised an eyebrow, "You guys do realize I can still hear you, right?"

"RUN CRIMSON, SHE KNOWS EVERYTHING! ABORT ABORT!" He ran away from the table screaming nonsense about how the enemy knew. He stopped after a second, and then teleported back to his plate to eat somewhere else.

"He's… a complicated man." I said slowly. There was silence for a second as other people looked at the gruff man running across the cafeteria, and then it returned to the buzz of normal conversation.

"I suddenly don't feel hungry, want to go look for my sword?" She nodded, still recovering from Qrow's outburst.

"It's around there I think." I told Pyrrha, pointing to a patch of the lake where I remembered it landing.

"That's a random spot, how do you know it fell exactly there?" She said suspiciously.

"Because the Bullhead I crashed is right there." I said moving my finger to the right slightly, pointing to the crash."

"Oh." She said simply, and closed her eyes to concentrate. She opened her eyes after a few seconds and Excalibur flew out of the water with a splash, arcing through the air and impaling itself into the ground next to us.

"That was much easier than I thought it would be. I thought we would have to go OUT to the lake to do it, but whatever." I said shrugging and picking up my sword covered in plant matter and dripping with lake water. _Weird, I thought it would have rusted at least slightly with that amount of pressure and water. _I walked over to a blank patch of dirt while brushing some of the underwater plants on the handle and hilt, and impaled the blade into the dirt. I pulled it out, scraping off the plant flora and making causing it to shine brightly in the morning light.

"What is that blade made of Cri?" Pyrrha said, reveling at the shining blade.

"A special polyblend of iron and other materials so I can magnetize it, as well as cut through almost every material known to man." I said, throwing it up into the air and transforming it. I caught it, and put it my right jacket pocket.

"That is… cool Cri." Pyrrha said, attempting to use a word that wasn't in her usual vocabulary.

"Well thanks Pyrrha, it means a lot to me that you got my sword back, I owe you one." I said, patting her lightly on the shoulder as I walked past her back towards the hotel.

"Wait, where are you going, Cri?" She said, turning around to face me.

"To the hotel to pack and get ready for Beacon, of course." I said, giving her a weird look.

"Oh, okay. I shall follow you. I should pack as well." She fell in step with me and we walked back towards the hotel to get ready for our first day at Beacon.

**A/N: Thank you for reading, and much thanks to /u/-Falcyon- for editing and lots more. I don't think this story would've been nearly as good without his help. Please remember to favorite/follow/review below.**


	4. Chapter 4 Royal Purple

**A/N: Fourth chapter, not much to say, except sorry it's a day off schedule. Thanks for reading.**

We walked back to the hotel to ready for Beacon. Pyrrha and I entered through the lavish revolving door and saw Qrow talking to a teenage girl wearing a purple jacket which had only one sleeve on the left arm. The right side had no sleeve, exposing a geometric tattoo covering her bicep. She was relatively tall for a teenager, and thin with purple eyes, as well as a pale complexion. _I'm sensing a theme in her choice of wardrobe. Can't say I'm against it though, she looks pretty nice. _She appeared to be talking to Qrow and annoyed with him, although not overly so since a smile was creeping onto her face.

Pyrrha and I walked up to them.

"And that is why alpacas are the best. Get it," Qrow said smiling and looking around at his crowd of three. Pyrrha and I hadn't even heard the joke, but the girl appeared to be shaking her head in shame while holding back a laugh.

"Anyway, my younger friends, this is my daughter, Royal," he said nodding to the girl. _Well that explains why she's so attractive, I mean just look at Qrow. _I thought sarcastically.

"Hi, I'm Crimson. This is Pyrrha." I pointed to us respectively.

"Hello!" Pyrrha exclaimed.

"She's going to Beacon with you guys! I didn't even have to pull any strings, she's just that good!" Qrow hugged his daughter, an unwilling victim.

"Alright Dad, you can stop embarrassing me in front of people I'm going to school with for the next four years," she said, trying to pull herself out of his bearlike hug. _This'll be funny._

I walked up close next to Qrow, and whispered, "I think they both know," and stepped back, knowing full well what would happen. Qrow let go of Royal and ran the sprint from where I was standing, to the door which was at least 100 meters in less than 5 seconds. He teleported past the revolving door, not stopping.

"What did you do," Royal asked me.

"Earlier Pyrrha overheard me and him whispering in front of her. When she told him that she had overheard us, we were even right in front of her, he set off like a bomb like he just did now."

Royal scrunched her nose.

"I don't think I've ever seen him do that before, what did you guys do to him?" We shrugged simultaneously.

"I have no Remnantly idea why he was so upset from that. What did you say to him by the way," Pyrrha asked, curious.

"I told him, 'I think they both know.', and that seemed to do the trick. Anyway, I need to go pack. You can come if you want," I told her, waking towards my room.

"Sure." she said simply, walking in step.

I heard Pyrrha's footsteps run up behind me and walk with me on the left.

"So, you're going to Beacon as well?" Royal nodded.

"Yep, my Dad helped me learn how to use my scythe, and apparently was so good that I got in. I'll show you soon it soon, since we are going to be practically living together for 4 years." We started walking up the stairs.

"So where are you guys from?"

"Mistral. Vytal is definitely different from home." I answered, remembering how small some of the buildings were, and how there were next to no trees.

"I've always wanted to go there; I've heard it's beautiful this time of year." She said almost wistfully.

"It is rather impressive, although I think Vytal looks fabulous this time of year as well."

"It is fall, the tree colors are pretty cool when they start to change." We reached our rooms. It was awkward for a second, since we didn't want to leave her waiting alone.

"I uh, have to get more properly dressed; you talk to her while you pack." Pyrrha nervously told me, quickly taking out her key and closing the door behind her after she entered. _That was weird._

I took out my own key and opened the door, revealing what was in reality only two days of living and could pass for someone having lived in solitude for years. I laughed nervously.

"Sorry about the mess, I didn't know anyone else was coming."

"It's fine, my room is waaaaaay messier," she said, laughing nervously along with me. I walked over to my bed and started to pack. She was silent for a minute, content just looking out the window until she saw my Semblance charger.

"What's that?" She pointed at the metallic object in my hands.

"It's what I use to charge my Semblance, since I have electrokinesis." I put it in the bag carefully, and then put in another pile of clothes into the suitcase carefully.

"You control electricity? Sounds cool. She walked and sat down on the chair next to the table in the small living room, and pulled out her scroll.

"Well what's your Semblance?" I asked her, curious. She sighed.

"I can make sentient things out of Aura. Like this." She balled her right hand, and concentrated for a second. She opened it and a tiny blue swallow flapped in her hand. It looked unusual because of its unnatural, flat color and looking like it was made out of polygons. She closed her fingers, and it disappeared.

"Cool, so you can make animals out of Aura?" I went into the bathroom to get my toothbrush.

"Yeah, but the cost grows exponentially when I make it bigger, and I feel pretty drained after doing it if it's big enough." Royal put her hands back into her pockets. I zipped up my suitcase, finally done.

"I'm done, you ready," I asked her, carrying my suitcase.

"Yeah, I think I'll go look for my Dad though. I need to make sure that he doesn't get lost or something." She rolled her eyes.

"Okay, good luck." I followed her out the door and shut it. Pyrrha opened her door at the same time, dragging her luggage behind her. _I thought she was getting into different clothes. Unless I remember wrong, she just had on those same clothes._

Royal hadn't appeared to have noticed this, or if she had she didn't mention it, simply saying,

"Goodbye," and walking down the stairs to look for her father.

"So, shall we?" She offered.

"Yes. We shall," I said, imitating her formal speech facetiously as I brought my luggage down the stairs.

"Wait a second, where are we supposed to go?"

"I believe we're supposed to go to the transit center that takes students to and from Beacon. I'm pretty sure that I saw it on our way here, it's not that far." Our luggage clacked on the floor as they landed, and I followed Pyrrha to our transit.

We were walking towards the building labeled with a gigantic sign that read, "BEACON BULLHEAD LANDING ZONE" in big gold letters. _I have no idea how I did not notice that._

"Hey you're that guy that took down the helicopter!" A girl said behind me. I turned around. _That's the girl that was on the rooftop last night! _She looked to be around a year younger than me, and was very short with a petite build, and black hair with red highlights. She was wearing a red hood, and had silver eyes. I walked towards her.

"You have... silver eyes." I said, remembering something and dropping my luggage. She looked creeped out, and also as if someone had said that to her before.

"Uh... yes?" She said nervously, freezing up as I approached. _I feel like I need to remember something about silver eyes, what was it?_ I snapped out of my trance.

"Oh you're that girl that listened to Jeff Williams in the dust shop!" I said, snapping my fingers. She now looked more confused than creeped out.

"Yes?" She said looking at me.

"I've never met anyone else that knows him! What's your favorite song?" I said enthusiastic having met someone else that knew him.

"Boop?" She said, with a look of surprise on her face. I threw up my hands and walked away.

"Let's go Pyrrha, she has poor taste." Pyrrha was standing a few feet away, still trying to figure out what just happened. I walked past her onto the bullhead, dragging my luggage that I had dropped.

A flurry of roses passed by me and stopped in front of me, creating a trail from where the girl had been only a second ago, to where she was now in front of me. _Wait, roses, a red hood, silver eyes, a scythe, and has terrible taste in music. _A look of realization crossed my face as she opened her mouth, probably to argue for her crappy song.

"You wouldn't happen to be SilverEyedRoseScyther would you?" I said, connecting the dots, and making the jump in logic." She paused for a second, again with a look of surprise, and then shock.

"Then you're Red_Lightning_Ri3der?!" Pyrrha was watching this whole exchange that had taken around maybe an entire minute, watching it like a cricket match, fascinated, but having not a single idea of what was going on.

"For the record, Boop is the lowlight of the entire album! It isn't even CLOSE to the other songs in terms of epicness!" I told her, arguing about fight that we commonly had on Dustit about which song is best.

"The other songs are okay, but Boop is the best! It's about friendship, and caring, and –" I put a hand over her mouth.

"No, I will not remove my hand until you admit that Boop is not the best song." Pyrrha pointed behind me, and I turned my head only to see a gauntleted fist approaching my face at an alarming speed. I slowed time as it neared me, and sent a strong arc of electricity to knock my attacker out, reaching out to the owner of the gauntlet with my left hand.

Time sped back up, and a girl clad scantily in yellow and brown twitched on the ground. The two other girls gave me looks.

"What? She tried to hit me," I said removing my hand from the red head's mouth and shrugging. I looked back down at the girl to examine her more. She had lilac eyes with blonde hair, and wore a shirt that was cut at her midriff that also exposed a generous amount of cleavage. The girl with silver eyes ran to her sister and kneeled, about to touch the prostrate girl. I moved near the speed of lightning to grab her hand and stop her, putting my other hand on her leg to reabsorb the electricity, filling my Semblance up to full, and almost refilling my batteries to its limit as well.

I let go of her hand and stood up, backing away slowly from the girl. I saw her flip up and ready her fists.

"WHY YOU LITTLE!"

"Sis, stop," The girl in red pleaded, holding her back from trying to come at me again. I arced lightning across my hands to show I didn't need weapons to stop her.

"Ruby, stay out of this. He touched you and he deserves to die!" She broke past her sister's grasp and tried to hit me again. I didn't even bother to move, and caught one of her gauntlets, smiling, and pushing electricity into her body again.

I caught her as she fell, and laid her up on the concrete, shaking my head. _Some people just don't get the hint. _I stood up from my kneeling position, looking over to the scythe wielder and asking, "So, what do I have to do to get her to NOT kill me," I said, letting her twitch on the ground. She sighed.

"Well, leave her there for a minute, she should calm down soon. She's not ever angry for very long." She sat down next to her sister, being careful not to touch her. I waited. Pyrrha finally broke the silence.

"So, is that enough time?" The scythe wielder and I nodded in sync. _I think she's had enough time to mull over her actions, time to release her. _By tapping her head, I sucked all the excess electricity from her body and stood up, walking backwards slightly just in case the silver eyed girl was wrong. The girl on the ground sighed, and stood up to face me.

"I'm sorry, I should've been more reasonable, all I saw was your hand on my sister's face. Again, I'm sorry." She looked down at her feet as she said it, and I nodded in forgiveness.

"Want to shake on it," She said with a completely serious face, holding out her now ungauntleted hand. I used my ability. _On the one hand, she could try and hit me again. But on the other… it's best not to make enemies. _I shook her hand, and she didn't try to crush it or kill me.

The girl in red laughed, saying, "Was that so bad Yang?" The girl, who was apparently Yang growled at her sister and released my hand.

"So are you guys going to Beacon too?" I asked them, pointing to luggage that appeared to be theirs.

"Yep," Yang said, putting her sister in a headlock, "My little sister is coming with me and I'm so proud of her!" I nodded, asking, "So what are your names," gesturing towards them.

"I'm Ruby, and this is Yang, my sister," Ruby said excitedly, still in the headlock. "Yang, you can let go now."

"Never! Are you guys coming or what?" Yang finally let go of Ruby and they picked up their luggage, walking towards the Bullhead.

"…And that's how I managed to live after falling." I finished, having explained my story after Ruby asked. Ruby raised an eyebrow.

"But how did you get back your sword? If it fell into the bottom of the harbor there's no way you could've gotten it. The lake is 100 feet deep at the least." I saw Pyrrha wildly shaking her head behind the sisters looking at me.

"We got a really big magnet, and pulled it out that way."

"Your weapon is magnetic? There aren't any materials strong enough to be used as weapons for hunters and huntresses that are also magnetic." I shrugged and smiled.

"I guess my sword isn't good enough then, right Pyrrha?" I said looking at her. Her face reddened, but quickly returned to its normal shade as the pair looked at her. It was Yang's turn to ask, and she had _that_ look. _Oh goodie. This'll be fun._

"Woah! I didn't know you guys were THAT close."

"YANG! Anyway, you guys want some cookies? I packed them for the trip and made extras, just in case." Ruby pulled out a huge platter of cookies from God knows where, and started to eat them. We all grabbed one.

"But seriously, you don't think his WEAPON is good enough Ruby?" Yang said smiling. I finished my cookie, and started drawing tallies in the air as if I was using a chalkboard.

"And that's two points for Yang, and two points for Qrow. I can't wait to see who wins." Ruby and Yang looked surprised.

"Dat's mah uncuh!" Ruby said with cookies still in her mouth, and then gulped. I was surprised.

"I knew he was a father, but I didn't know that you guys were his nieces." Both their faces turned thoughtful.

"Well, actually we don't know if he's blood related. We've tried asking our Dad, and he's always said, 'He might as well be,' which could mean that he's not related." Yang said.

"Well anyway, I think it's time that we got onto the Bullhead." I said, moving towards the boarding ramp.

_Somewhere close by…_

Hunter reached up to his metaphorical headset.

"Grey, Crimson and the rest are getting on the Bullhead, that Royal girl was cutting it close. And are we really joining Beacon?" There was silence for a second. Hunter sighed.

"Grey, if you nodded I couldn't hear you."

"Yes, we're joining Beacon. I've already arranged the teams with Headmaster Ozpin. Me and you are making Team CHRG, with Crimson, Royal, you, and I." Hunter was confused.

"I thought that they did them in some stupid mission to get a relic. How are you going to manage that?"

"I have my ways…"

"You're just going to 'nudge' them with mind-control aren't you?" Hunter smiled at the thought. There was more silence.

"I'll take that as a yes, and you owe me for this. Desino said all I would have to do is recon, not go to school."

"I'll make sure he adds a bonus to your pay, as well as mine." Grey said sarcastically, "Now come on, you don't want to be late for school do you?" Hunter rolled his eyes and went invisible, jumping down from his vantage point looking over the transit station.

_I'll need to get him back for that, no one should exploit someone else's mysterious moment. Justice shall be delivered._

_Back to Crimson_

We got off the Bullhead after being in the air for around 15 minutes, in which some blond haired guy threw up on Yang's shoes. Hilarity ensued as he tried to apologize and Yang got upset.

The moment the doors opened, he was out the door and returning his breakfast to the ground. _Poor guy, he'll be remembered for that the entire time we're here._ I walked over to him, feeling sympathetic.

"Are you okay?" I asked him as other people passed us, going to the main hall of Beacon. He stopped for a second, and looked up to me.

There was a small amount of dribble on his face. I made a motion of wiping my arm over my mouth, and he copied it, getting rid of the drool.

"Do you have motion sickness? You seem fine now," I said, observing the now lack of him vomiting after getting off the Bullhead.

"Yeah, I do." I reached a hand down and offered it to him. He waved it off and stood up by himself.

"I'm Crimson Sera, and you are," I greeted, outreaching my hand again for a shake.

"I'm Jaune Arc, nice to meet you Crimson." We shook this time, and looked around awkwardly.

"So… to the main hall," I asked, walking off to the main hall to break the silence.

"Yep." He followed me towards it.

After a minute of walking, I saw a huge explosion happen in front of Ruby and ran to make sure she was okay. I was slightly confused, slowing down as I reached her. She was pushing her index fingers together as if someone had just said her entire life was a failure. Standing opposite her was a petite girl, fuming mad. Her white hair and dress were singed and she looked positively furious. There was a large load of luggage strewn around.

"You idiot! Do you have any idea who I am?!" She was standing on top of a metal grate that coincidentally connected to a metal plate next to me. _Hehe, don't yell at people bitch._ I dropped to one knee, and threw electricity into the grate, and into the girl yelling at Ruby. Not too much, just enough to get her attention. The electricity arced along the grate, and into the girl, dropping her like a stone to the ground. _Uh oh. I think I overdid it._ A girl dressed in black and white and wearing a bow picked up a vial of dust that had dropped to the ground, and walked over to us.

"U-uh, did you just kill this girl," Ruby asked me, about to touch the girl. _SHIT! _This time the girl in black stopped her hand.

"Why would you touch someone who was just shocked with electricity," the girl asked Ruby, frowning. Ruby pulled her hand back, pouting.

"Well I mean even though she was yelling at me, and was being really scary I just wanted to make sure that she wasn't hurt by the massive shock of electricity that Crimson put through the grate to stop her from yelling at me and-," she took a deep breath, "-I feel bad." The girl with the bow shook her head and looked at me.

"Well, are you going to take it out of her? We can't just leave her here like this," She said calmly, cocking her head in anticipation. I walked over, whistling some of Jeff William's "Gold" as both of them looked at me. I crouched next to the girl's head, her eyes full of fear.

"Are you ready to stop yelling," I asked her seriously. She didn't move. "Blink once if you aren't going to yell at Ruby over here," I told her, thrusting a thumb towards Ruby. She blinked, and I put an index finger on her head, relieving her of paralysis. She got up quickly and backed away, drawing her sword.

"Do you know who I am you imbecile," she said snobbishly. I sighed, and made my hand into a finger gun. I arced a little electricity across my hand and made a "bang" noise. The white haired girl jumped.

"I have no idea who you are, and I don't care all that much. You must be _awfully _important if you have nothing better to do than yell at people though." The girl in black stepped in.

"She's the heiress to the Schnee dust company, Weiss Schnee, because of that I think both of you should forget about this whole incident, since it's blatantly obvious neither of you are going to gain anything from this." The girl motioned for us to both put down our weapons.

"Fine, but it still doesn't give her the right to yell at people. But… I'm not going to make enemies on purpose." I said blowing the smoke off my imaginary finger gun and holstering it.

"Now shake on it." Me and the girl dressed in white begrudgingly shook on it. As soon as we released our hands, she stalked off angrily towards the hall, annoyed at us being alive.

"Y-you didn't have to do that Crimson, you know that right" Ruby said nervously. I nodded.

"Look at it this way; she'll probably never bother you again. Let's go to the main hall, come on."

I milled around in the throng of students waiting for Headmaster Ozpin to speak. I saw Yang and Ruby talking, and Weiss was sneaking up behind Ruby with an angry face. I began to walk up to the trio and saw her yelling again, holding up a pamphlet of some sort up to her face. I walked behind her to the left and coughed. She turned to face me and I gave her a nice big smile.

"You do remember our little agreement earlier, right Weiss? Because I do remember saying that I would not hesitate to paralyze you again. I would absolutely HATE to do that as well." She looked scared again, backing up.

"Now, if you apologize to Ruby well enough in the next 20 seconds, I will not leave you on the ground helpless, for the entire rest of the day." I looked down at my imaginary watch and said,

"Aaaaand go," pointing at her. Weiss started talking instantly.

"I'm very sorry for the way I behaved Ruby, I should have been more rational and not have instantly reprimanded you for sneezing fire dust all over my dress." _Honestly I don't want to accidentally shock someone, so that'll have to do._

"Do you accept the apology Ruby?" I asked her. She nodded, and I was content with that. Yang was still stunned looking at Weiss.

"Oh my god, you actually blew up" she said disconnected from the current events.

"A little late there Yang, a little late," I told her, measuring how much she was late by the fraction of an inch between my thumb and index finger. She snapped back to reality as Headmaster Ozpin started to speak.

He cleared this throat and started.

"I'll… keep this brief. You have traveled here today in search of knowledge, to hone your craft and acquire new skills, and when you finish, you plan to dedicate your life to the protection of the people." _No, I'm pretty sure I came for the food._

"But I look amongst you, and all I see is wasted energy, in need of purpose, direction. You assume knowledge will free you of this, but your time at this school will prove that knowledge can only carry you so far." _So far I feel really uplifted; this guy should quit his job here and become a motivational speaker._ "It is up to you, to take the first step." Ozpin moved away from the speaker and exited the stage.

The women that had appeared on the rooftop to block Ruby from harm gave us instructions on where we were supposed to go, including that our initiation would start the next day. The room started to clear of students as they went to mill around the school. Yang and Ruby started to move away as well, and before I could follow them, a voice startled me from behind.

"Good job there with Weiss, I di-would have done the exact the same thing." Grey said, interrupting himself halfway through the sentence. I turned around to look at him, and saw him standing next to another guy with blonde hair sticking out the sides of a baseball cap on his head, that was slightly smaller than me. Grey was wearing his normal grey coat, while the other guy was wearing a green trenchcoat that looked slightly too big for him. _Hey wait a second…_

"Are you the guy that delivered my pizza?" I asked, pointing at him.

"Well that's a bit of a strange question if you ask me." He replied offended.

"Well, I was asking you. And you ARE the guy that delivered the pizza, I remember your voice." He laughed.

"Yeah, that was me. Can I have my pen back by the way?"

"No, you can't. Next time don't run away before I can give it back to you and I might."

"Anyway, my name is Hunter, nice to meet you." He said extending a hand.

**A/N: Thank you guys very much for reading! It would mean a lot to me if you followed or favorite since it means I'm doing something right. Please leave a **_**constructive**_** review if you think I'm NOT doing something right, as it greatly speeds up the correction process! Thank you, and see you next time.**

**Thanks to /u/-Falcyon- for editing.**


	5. Chapter 5 Alpacas

I accepted Hunter's hand and shook it, releasing after a moment.

"So do you two know each other," I asked them, curious. They looked at each other, debating what to tell me.

"Yes, we met recently at a… uh…," Grey trailed off.

"Strip club, don't tell anyone," Hunter said, leaning in towards and smiling. I opened my mouth to speak, and shut it after realizing nothing that could be said could make the current tone any less awkward. Hunter was still smiling while Grey and I thought hard about what he just said.

"So… how did you guys get in? You weren't on the Bullhead Pyrrha and I took." Hunter lost his smile and exchanged glances with Grey, yet again. _This is really weird._

"Me and Hunter got permission from Mr. Ozpin to come here, special circumstances," Grey said nonchalantly. _Special circumstances?_

"Well, okay. I'm going to go walk around campus. See you guys later." I walked towards out of the main hall, thinking. _That was really weird. It's almost like they're up to something…_

Hunter and Grey breathed a sigh of relief.

"You didn't tell him, right Grey? That you two are… kind of the same," Hunter asked him, hinting that if he had told him, it would probably end badly.

"No, and that was really stupid of you. A strip club? Seriously," Grey told him, walking out the door and to the cafeteria. Hunter shrugged, smiling.

"You were failing there; the only good excuse would be for you to have been so embarrassed about it that you wouldn't want to say it. The truth is far more embarrassing really if you think about it," Hunter said, scratching his chin. Grey thought about it.

"Yeah, it is, isn't it," Grey replied, asking no one in particular as he opened the door for him and his friend.

I walked outside, breathing in the fresh air as I looked around. _This place is pretty nice, although I think there are too many trees. _I heard a bleat behind me, and turned around. There was an alpaca standing next to me. _Uh… I didn't know they had alpacas on campus._

"Hi Crimson, my _young friend,_" A voice said above me that sounded suspiciously like Qrow's. I looked up and saw him staring off into the infinite space.

"Hi there Qrow, why are you crouching up there? And why is there an alpaca next to me," I asked him, confused at the peaceful animal next to me. Qrow looked down at me.

"I'll get straight to the point, you lied to me. They DIDN'T know," He told me, his face molding into one of seriousness. _Uh oh…_

"For that, you'll have to face… my Alpaca Torture," Qrow said dramatically, grinning like a madman. _I don't like where this is going…_ I waited in silence, not wanting to anger him anymore. He waved his hand, and a herd of alpaca appeared in front of me, with at least a few dozen of them. Qrow bleated out something that sounded vaguely near what an alpaca would say, and they all turned to look at me, not making a noise. Their unfocused, bulging eyes suddenly straightened out and stared directly at me. _Oh. Uh… Time to run? Definitely time to run._

I backed up slowly at first, and broke into a run towards one of the buildings as the herd of alpacas chased me, the sound of their bleating reaching a crescendo. _I'm going to kill Qrow for this!_ I tripped during my run, falling flat on my face. _Dust._ Every part of my exposed body was trampled by alpacas, and luckily subsided fairly quickly after the animals passed over me.

I picked myself up, and dusted myself off as someone approached me. I looked up and saw a Faunus girl with huge brown bunny ears, and the eyes to match. She wore a school uniform, and was kind of cute in my opinion.

"A-are you okay," she asked me nervously, her eyes drawn to the ground.

"Yeah," I said looking around for any sign of Qrow or alpacas.

"S-so how're you liking Beacon so far?" She looked up briefly, but then immediately swung her head back down so she could inspect her feet.

"Terribly, I just got run over by a pack of Dusting alpacas. I didn't even know they were on this continent." I told her sarcastically; still worried about if Qrow was just withholding them because of this girl. _His semblance is teleportation! Can he summon live animals, too?_

"O-oh," She said disheartened. Her bunny ears twitched and she lightened back up, asking, "S-so what's your name? I forgot to ask."

"I'm Crimson, Crimson Sera, I just got here today," I said, extending a hand. She recoiled as if I was going to hit her at stomach level. _Uh…_ She opened one eye and looked down at my hand.

"Y-you aren't going to hit me," She asked in disbelief.

"Why would I do that?"

"B-because of my heritage," She said, pulling down her left ear to massage it. My hand was still extended at this point, and I withdrew it, feeling exceptionally awkward.

"So… what's your name?"

The brown haired girl stopped massaging her ear bringing her hands in front of her clasped together, and replied, "V-velvet, Velvet Scarlatina." I thought for a second.

"That's a nice name," I said weakly. We both laughed nervously. Her eyes suddenly widened in realization.

"OH DUST! I'M LATE FOR CLASS," she said, breaking into a run towards one of the buildings.

"BYE CRIMSON," she cried, waving her right hand at me while she ran. _She seems almost beaten, mentally at least. Racism towards Faunus was never anywhere near that bad in Mistral._

"Hey Crimson." Royal said behind me, scaring the crap out of me and causing me to jump.

"What is it with people and them always approaching me from behind?!" I was annoyed at the number of times people had come up to me from behind. I turned around to see Royal raising an eyebrow.

"O…kay…." she said slowly.

"Do you know anything about your Dad's Alpaca Torture by the way? He seems kind of ticked off that I was joking him in the hotel." Royal's eyes widened, and she brought me into whisper range, looking around for her father to see if he was listening.

"He actually said that?! Dear god… Where are the alpacas now," she asked urgently. I backed up slightly.

"I don't know, they're not here at least," I told Royal, looking around for any signs of the usually peaceful beasts. "How does he 'summon' them anyway?"

"Well, we kind of run an alpaca zoo. And his Semblance is teleportation. The reason he probably didn't do it earlier while Ozpin was speaking was because he had to go back to the zoo to check on them." I raised an eyebrow.

"So your dad not only teaches, but he scouts for potential students of Beacon, as well as running an alpaca zoo? Why just alpacas?" I was impressed by his micro management skills. Most people had trouble keeping track of two kids.

"Well, yeah. But my mom mostly runs the zoo. It gets a surprising amount of people for what it is."

"Uh, just for the sake of argument, would your dad ever send his alpacas at me if you were standing next to me," I asked her, moving around her as if she was a shield. She pondered for a second.

"No, I don't think he would."

"Good, then I need you to stay in front of me as a meat sh- friend. Friend," She rolled her eyes as we walked towards the cafeteria for dinner.

We got our food from the lunch line and I sat down next to Grey who was with Hunter already at a table. I examined the other guy's trays.

"I see you chose the ultra-healthy dinner, just like I did," I said, picking up my meat lover's pizza.

"Yep, if we weren't hunters we'd probably be pretty fat wouldn't we," Hunter said, digging into his baked macaroni.

"Yesh, we rould," Grey mumbled through a mouth full of cheese fries covered in bacon. Velvet sat down across, and one seat to the right of me, putting down her plate full of leafed greens.

I greeted her with a "Hi Velvet." She reddened, and furiously shoved lettuce into her mouth, presumably to not have to respond out of embarrassment.

Grey and Hunter looked over at me, skeptical at the new person. I shrugged, and they continued back on their healthy food spree.

After a minute of quiet eating, Pyrrha, and Royal sat down, both across the table and the order now being; Royal, Pyrrha, and Velvet. Grey and Hunter looked at me yet again, even more skeptical. I shrugged again.

"So, how was your guy's first day at Beacon," Royal asked, eating a meat lovers pizza.

"Weird, because I got ran over by alpacas by your dad, but okay because I get to have free food. And nice choice of food by the way." I gave her a thumbs up. I turned to Pyrrha. "Now Pyrrha, what would it take for you to go and try a single piece of pizza? A duel," I said smiling. She looked up from her salad, shooting daggers through her eyes, and bit hard into a carrot, laying out exactly what she would do to me if I said something out of line again. I gulped nervously.

"Alright, maybe later then," I replied to her barrage of daggers. There was more silence for a second while we all quietly ate.

_Main hall_

As I put on my pajamas, I felt a pillow hit me on the back of the head, knocking me onto my sleeping bag face first. _Dust dammit. _Behind me I heard a small, "Sorry!" from Yang as I propped myself up on my elbows to look behind me. I saw Ruby and Yang laughing at me and I shook my head, trying to shake off the accident.

"What, you're just going to let them get away without retribution," Grey asked, sitting with his arms on his knees. I shrugged.

"It was an accident, there's no reason to really." While picking up the pillow, Grey _hmmmed_ at my response, picking up his Scroll next to him. I lightly tossed the pillow back at them, and Yang caught it, sending me a thumbs-up and a smile.

I turned to Grey, gesturing towards Yang, "See? No harm no foul. No reason to make a big deal over it." I finished fixing my shirt, and pulled my headphones and Scroll, selecting a Jeff Williams selection from my playlists, putting on the headphones as I went to sleep.

_Outside, 2 hours later while everyone is asleep_

"Dust it's cold outside Grey. Why couldn't we do this inside again," Hunter asked Grey as he rubbed his hands together for warmth.

"I told you, Ozpin has cameras everywhere, if we did it inside he'd almost certainly hear us," Grey said matter-of-factly to his friend.

"You're just doing it because I said that I met you at a strip club aren't you," Hunter said smiling. Grey didn't answer his question, and instead diverted the conversation to Crimson.

"I'm sure that we now have the same… kind of ability," Grey said shiftily. Hunter rolled his eyes.

"Yes, because we really needed two of you around. It does make more sense on why Desino sent us here though, although it is weird that there are only two of you in the entire, you know…" Grey sighed.

"What are the chances that we would go to the same school? Actually, don't tell me that. Let's go sleep; we have to 'find' our teams tomorrow."

I woke up to the sound of people packing, and propped myself up on my elbows, looking around at the clamor. _So today is the day that we get our teams, this should be fun. I still haven't seen anyone except for Pyrrha fight, so I don't know who I should try to get on my team._

"It looks like you are very ready Cri," Pyrrha said behind me with a poor attempt at sarcasm. I shook my head as I climbed out of my sleeping bag to stretch.

"You should just leave sarcasm to me Pyr, I'm waaaaay better at it." She gave me an odd look as I tried out a new nickname.

"Peer? That doesn't really work," She said, scrunching her eyes and thinking about it while I rolled up my sleeping bag.

"Neither does Cri for that matter, but you don't see _me _complaining." I zipped up the sleeping bag and started putting on my clothes over my pajamas.

"I think you complain plenty frequently if I remember correctly," she said, attempting to use sarcasm again. I finished putting on my clothes, and finally put on my jacket, placing my Excalibur in my pocket and strapping the katana in its sheathe on my hip.

"So… breakfast," I asked, turning around to face her.

"Yes, shall we go now?" She was already ready, having gotten dressed in combat attire. _I should probably get some real combat armor, jackets don't really protect you from anything except maybe a rash. _

"Sure, I'm pretty hungry." My stomach growled in agreement and we walked to breakfast.

We sat down at a table near the windows that overlooked the cliffs that we were supposedly supposed to go to soon for our team assignments. _What would they want us to do at a cliff though? Jump off or something? _My thoughts were interrupted as the busty blond known as Yang sat down next to me.

"Uh… hi there?" I was slightly confused as to why a girl I literally paralyzed yesterday was sitting down next to me, so I tensed up, not wanting to have someone that would likely be going to the same school as me for the next four years.

"Hi there Crimson! What a SPLENDID day it is today isn't it," She said a little too enthusiastically for my taste while smiling. Yang leaned in next to my ear, continuing in a way that I thought made slightly more sense. "I won't forget what happened yesterday, and if you ever pull something like that, OR touch Ruby again, you will not see the next day." I turned white as a sheet, knowing the extent that some people would go to see something go through with their promises.

"Hey Crimson," Ruby said behind me jubilantly. I turned my head slowly, and nodded to her, in fear of the demon next to me.

"Hello Ruby, how are you today," Pyrrha asked the excited red head girl.

"I'm good, but is he okay? He looks like he just found out that his cookies were taken." She pointed at me, still kind of out of it from Yang's threat.

"He's fiiiiine," Yang said, waving off my current state. Her eyes went red for a second, "Right?" I nodded quickly, and started to eat. Ruby sat on my left, placing down her tray full of chocolate chip cookies. _Where did she even GET those? I certainly didn't see them in the lunch line._

"Sup," Hunter said aloofly, trying to look cool as he appeared across from me, to the right of Pyrrha.

"Nothing, I am PERFECTLY FINE because Yang is sitting next to me, there is nothing to be worried about." I tried to allude to the fact that Yang was really angry, but it whooshed over his head as he stared at the busty girl's gauntlets.

"Those are a nice pair of br- bracelets you have there," Hunter said, recovering from his real thoughts.

"Why thank you. These ARE nice bracelets." She said, holding them up, and extending them to fit like a gauntlet with one shotgun barrel on each of them.

"Cool, but threaten my friend over there again, and you will regret it, even if it does look like you are trying to become his girlfriend or something with the amount of force you put into your words." I glared at him as Yang's eyes turned red. I tried to convey my best, 'What the dust are you trying to do Hunter?' face as Yang slowly got up from her seat.

Pyrrha cleared her throat, and we all looked to her.

"I agree with Hunter." She said quietly. I felt my mouth gape at the people that were supposedly at the same level of intelligence that I was. If this was a movie or a book, I'm sure this would be 'out of character.' This time, I tried to use my best, 'Why the hell are you trying to get me killed?' face to Pyrrha, and she didn't catch the hint either.

"Although I'm not sure that you would make the best girlfriend for him, so I must consult with Hunter for a second." They huddled together, whispering loudly. Too loudly.

"They would be okay together I think, she seems kind of angry though. But those gauntlets… whew." Hunter daydreamed for a second, and Pyrrha brought him back to reality.

"So the verdict is no, correct?"

"Well I mean that I don't really know Yang or Crimson all that much, so why don't we wait? I mean I was thinking about going for Yang, but if she's already got his eyes on him, I'll lay off until he either messes it up, or he dies." Pyrrha nodded in agreement, breaking the huddle.

"So you two are allowed to go out, as decided by Hunter and I." Pyrrha said finally, and the two nodded their heads in sync. I looked at Yang, who was deep in thought, and then over to Ruby who seemed to have a happy look on her face that displayed that she might not fully understand what was going on. Grey sat down to the left of me, eating a piece of sausage on his plate practically piled with it.

I shot him a look of 'please help me' and someone was finally able to see my silent call.

"Let's go early to the cliffs," Grey said in understanding of what was happening.

"Yep, I think we should go to the cliffs," I hastily said, trying to get off the current topic.

"Yang, are you okay, you look kind of like you're… thinking about something," Ruby said in concern for her sister doing something unusual. She nodded absent mindedly while getting up, as did everyone else who was sitting.

We stood over the cliffs, standing on suspicious looking metal plates that looked like launch pads. Ozpin was telling us how we had to find a relic at a temple north of the cliffs, and how the first person we made eye contact with would be our partner. _Seems kind of random if you ask me._

"Crimson," Grey whispered next to me.

"What," I asked him in a hushed voice.

"I forgot to tell you, you should probably press the button at the bottom of the sword when we jump." I raised an eyebrow.

"And that will do what exactly?" He shrugged my question off.

"Just do it, okay?"

After thinking about his words for a second, I realized something. There was a clicking noise, and then a yell as a student was launched of his plate.

"Grey, they ARE going to give us something to land with, right?" He smiled as the person next to him was launched.

"That makes it too easy, luckily for you, I got you covered." He was thrown into the air, and I had a moment to contemplate my life. _I'm about to get flung into the air, nothing to be worried about, nothing at all. _I heard a click below me, and I was catapulted into the forest.

I righted myself in the air, and pulled out the katana, examining it. _Grey and his freaking cryptic messages, I wish he would stop doing that. _After pushing the button on the bottom of the katana, the blade split into chains, somehow stretching several feet and billowing behind me. At the end of it was a small grappling hook. _How the hell does THAT work? _I shook of my initial reaction, and looked to the speeding ground below me.

As my height gradually decreased, a tree presented itself ripe for the grappling. I whipped the chain, and it stuck in the tree, swinging me around like a yoyo. The chain ran out, and my head was spinning when it did while I held onto the chain suspending me 15 feet above the ground. I pressed the bottom of the hilt, and the tree was cut diagonally as the sword reformed in my hands while I fell to the ground.

I landed hard on my feet, causing them to sting as I stood up. _Well that could've gone worse I guess. _I cracked my back, and saw a girl flying over head as she smashed into a raven, creating a small cloud of feathers. _Poor birdy._ As I tried to get my bearings, Royal burst through some bushes, making eye contact with me. I waved to her, and a huge Grimm burst through the bushes she had entered from, breaking off branches as it roared at us.

She stopped and took a purple shotgun off her waist, firing it at the Grimm as it charged at us. The Grimm was huge, at least 14 feet tall, and a Manticore. Manticores were especially dangerous because of their ability to regenerate, not even considering the fire breathing they could use, its ability to use its spikes as projectiles, or the second head they had as a tail. Its massive, gnarled spikes poked through its bony armor. _Perfect. This one is more mature._

I had never seen a Grimm in real life, but I was fairly confident that it was not a good idea to fight this thing. Pressing the button on the hilt, I filled my katana's battery slightly, and fired the railgun at it. The railgun shot out what looked to be bursts of energy that were not quite of this world. Unfortunately, the Grimm was barely affected by them, and breathed fire at us.

Royal changed her shotgun into a scythe and jumped above the flames, while I just dodged to the right of the monster. She landed on its head, trying to lopping it off, but its tail came around and knocked her off. A small crater formed where she landed as a result of her Aura, and I threw all of my electricity into the gun, charging it to max. I released the trigger and a ball of energy the size of a basketball flew into the Manticore, sending it flying and somersaulting in the air.

Royal jumped up, ready to fight the beast again.

"Royal, we can't really kill this thing; I don't have any power left! Come on, we aren't even supposed to kill them anyway." Royal looked at the beast, pained at just turning her back to it, and then nodded, putting away her scythe.

Even though we were able to outrun the Manticore which was the only nice thing about it, we ended up in the clearing where almost everyone else was. Royal and I said our hellos to the groups, and I looked around for a piece to take. The pairings seemed to be Ruby and Weiss, Blake and Yang, an orange haired girl and a guy with a pink strip in his hair. There were only two relics left and they looked like diamond kings. _How did no one else take these? They look freaking awesome._ Jaune was also with us, but Pyrrha who I assumed was his partner was no where to be found.

I picked it up, and nodded to Royal. Pyrrha appeared several hundred feet away, being chased by a Death Stalker, and was flung onto the ground in front of us a few seconds later. _Speak of the devil._

"Great, the gang's all here, now we can all die together," Yang said dryly.

"Not if I can help it…" Ruby said, pulling out her scythe and running towards the Deathstalker. I facepalmed. _Why? Just why would you run towards a huge Grimm that can probably kill you in two seconds?_ A few seconds later after her plan had failed, a huge Nevermore came out of nowhere, spraying feathers at her as she tried to escape the Deathstalker.

Yang ran towards her sister, trying to help her as her cape was speared through by a feather, pinning her to the ground. Yang fell to the ground as well, but luckily not impaled by the hale of feathers.

"Do you think that we should you know… help them," I asked to everyone.

"Nah, they're fine," Hunter replied, appearing next to me. I jumped.

"Can you stop doing that?!"

He shrugged. "You should be more worried about us man, there may or may not be a Manticore behind us."

"_DAMMMMMN YOU HUNTER!_" Grey yelled as he ran from the chasing Manticore.

**A/N: And done. Jesus Christ this took a really long time to write, 11 days. It took a while since I was preoccupied with writing one shots, and had other things. No other chapter should take nearly this long, so expect them in at least a slightly closer time frame.**

**Anyway, make sure to leave a follow/favorite and/or a review! It really helps if you review since it means I know I'm doing something right (or wrong) as well as motivate me to write!**

**Thank you for reading.**

**Thanks to –Falcyon- for the Manticore, and for editing as well, make sure to check out his stuff!**


	6. Chapter 6 Team CHRG

Grey ran from the Manticore as he evaded the massive spikes that came out of its armor. Hunter yawned and lazily took out guns strapped to both sides of his hips. He disappeared, and I ran towards the fight, signaling to Royal for her to come. We both ran at full speed towards the Manticore while Grey was chased by it. Hunter appeared on top of it, and stabbed two daggers into the top of its head, disappearing immediately after.

The beast roared in pain and stopped in its tracks as we approached. I pulled out Excalibur and threw it at the beast. It bounced off its armor with a small _tink_ to the ground as everyone looked to me. I shrugged, and pulled out the katana, resuming the fight. Grey turned around and pulled a huge sword from his back, raking a leg with the sword and amputating it. The beast swiped its tail at him as it grunted, and Grey sidestepped it, cutting off the other leg. The beast almost fell on its face, but was saved by its now regrown leg, using this leg to great effect and whacking Grey several yards in the opposite direction.

Hunter appeared again and continued stabbing the Grimm's head, only making it angrier. He was swiped off the Grimm too by a tail swing, and landed a few feet away. The Manticore roared at me and Royal, letting steam out of the two holes in its mask.

"Hey Royal," I asked her whispering, "Can your Semblance do anything right now?" She nodded her head and reloaded her shotgun, pumping it to show her readiness. I picked up Excalibur on the ground next to me, and held it in my left hand. The beast charged without warning, throwing spikes at us. I used my ability as I saw the spikes coming at me. The spikes slowed and I dodged them as Royal flanked the massive Grimm.

Grey started taking potshots at it with his sword, and Hunter started firing his dagger pistols at it as well, trying to divert the attention away from Royal. She transformed her shotgun into scythe form and pulled the trigger, using the shotgun recoil to cut a gash into the Grimm. She placed her hand in front of the gash and shot a shining blue cube of Aura inside of it, and quickly removed her hand as the wound closed. The beast launched a set of spikes at her, and they bounced off her Aura shield without harming her, but taking close to 50% of it out, leaving only 5% to her after summoning the cube.

The beast stopped moving, and then fell over. I slowly put down my sword and walked over to the downed Grimm, kicking it.

"That's it?" I looked over at Royal for confirmation and she nodded as the Manticore disintegrated, leaving the pulsing blue cube. She quickly picked it up and absorbed it.

"Good job there Crimson, I see how much work you did," Hunter said as he walked over with a huge grin on his face. I sighed, shaking my head.

"I knew you had it covered, so there was no reason to."

"Covered my ass, but it was your fault Hunter. Why the hell did you leave when you said you would help me take it out?!" Grey asked Hunter angrily as he sheathed his sword on his back.

"You guys can argue later, where the hell did everyone else go?" We all looked around; sure that Royal was just messing with us. A singular tumbleweed passed in front of me as if to answer my question.

"I guess they went to go help Pyrrha?" I looked to everyone else for confirmation. They shrugged in agreement, and they started to follow me as I walked back towards the cliffs. Royal caught up to me, walking in step as we started to talk.

"So how did you kill the Manticore? What did you do?"

"My Semblance is the ability to make living things out of Aura, and so I made a sort of virus that would instantly kill it," She said, explaining what the cube did. I frowned.

"If you could do that, why didn't you do that on the other Manticore?"

"Because if I drop it, bad stuff could happen. The only reason I knew I would be able to do it safely was because Hunter and Grey were distracting it."

I thought for a second. "Can you do it on people?"

Royal shook her head. "From what's been recorded of my kind of Semblance, no one has even been able to successfully make a virus that kills people, so I don't think so."

_While walking back_

"I still don't understand why you can't just tell him, it would make our lives so much easier. And why does he want us to look so incompetent?" Hunter was conversing with Grey in hushed tones as they walked back in step, while Crimson and Royal talked to each other.

Grey sighed, replying, "Desino said so, I'm not going to ask a question which he clearly isn't going to answer. The little that I _do _know, is that all it does is speed up the process, which we really don't want." He opened his palm and a small grey symbol appeared on it, in the shape of a hooded man with his face wrapped in cloth as his eyes also flashed from their usual green, to a dark grey.

"He probably also doesn't want us to look like anything other than first year students, so that would make sense. Just make sure that we keep him away from _him._"

"The one thing that I still don't understand is his parents, it just doesn't make sense. No matter how you look at it, he still should be-"

"Shut up, you do realize Ozpin still has cameras with audio, right?" Hunter sighed, shaking his head.

"...Team RWBY. Led by… Ruby Rose."

I watched as Yang tackled Ruby in a hug that would in theory kill several large Ursai. Ozpin turned his attention to Hunter, Royal, Grey, and I.

"Now, for the last and final team, we have Team CHRG led by…" He paused for effect. "…Crimson Sera." The crowd cheered and I was astonished, and slightly annoyed that I was the leader. _Fuck, I might have to actually work. I just came here for the free food. _Hunter punched me on the arm in a friendly way, congratulating me.

After the announcements, we had dinner in our respective teams. The theme for the night was barbecue, but unfortunately there had been a mix-up in the kitchen and every meat except steak had been lost.

"I still think it's weird that no one picked up the diamond freaking kings. Those two were definitely the coolest," I mentioned, cutting off a piece of my medium rare steak and eating it. Hunter shrugged as he picked up his rare piece of steak.

"Some people just can't think about what to tak- ow that fucking hurt Grey." Grey continued to eat his hockey puck of a steak. No, really. It looked like an actual hockey puck. How was that even possible?

"How can you eat that," Royal asked Grey after swallowing her medium steak.

"Better to be safe than sorry." Grey replied as he vigorously cut into his incredibly chewy steak.

Hunter whispered loudly at us, "He has no actual taste buds, it's the only reason he can eat it." Grey kicked him again and Hunter laughed. He retaliated this time however, as was seen from Grey's normally stoic face changing to one of pain. Grey turned to him, and I could swear that his eyes turned from his normal green to a dark grey.

Hunter stopped his laughter, and cleared his throat to eat his steak.

_Ozpin's office_

"Interesting, it seems as if they're keeping something from me." Ozpin said as he looked over the tapes and recordings. A relatively tall man leaning against with a cloth covered face nodded in agreement. Ozpin looked up from the tapes, to where the man's face would be.

"I allow people to keep secrets, but can I ask why you don't want me to know your name or voice?" The man shook his head, and disappeared. Ozpin rubbed his head and sipped his coffee as he thought. _What would be worth keeping from me? And why? They don't seem to being trying to hide it very well, or they could be incompetent. But that fight with the Manticore seemed almost acted, they both got dispatched relatively easily by it… I need to have Glynda investigate those two further._

After dinner, we went to our dorms and encountered a problem.

"Wait, is there only one room? For all four of us?" I asked in general.

"Yes, only one." Ozpin replied behind us. I jumped, not expecting the headmaster himself to appear that uncomfortably close to my back.

"Isn't that… kind of… you know…" I tried to ask him unsuccessfully.

"I believe that you are all mature adults, and will be able to handle it accordingly. If Ms. Royal would not like to room with you three, I'm sure that one of the other teams would be more than accommodating."

"I don't know what you're worked up about Crimson, it's not like we're 12 or anything." Royal said, trying to be aloof at the situation but failing terribly. I looked to my two friends of the same gender. Grey looked indifferent and Hunter nodded vigorously.

"Never mind then I guess," I said shrugging.

"Good, you should get unpacked as well as classes start at 8 tomorrow. The door can be unlocked with any of your Scrolls." Ozpin said walking away as he sipped from his cup. Grey shut the door, and we all unpacked our respective suitcases. After I put away everything I took off my weapons, and placed them on a nightstand next to my bed. I took off my top layer of clothes, revealing the pajamas that I still had on from earlier. Then Royal started to strip, while she was still in the same room of us.

I gaped for a second, "Hey uh… Royal..." She stopped while bringing her shirt over her head, exposing her midriff. "Why don't you do that in the bathroom?" Royal continued, and I turned around quickly. I looked to Hunter and Grey for backup. Grey was again, indifferent and Hunter was struggling to contain a laugh.

"I already told you, I don't care," Royal said, remaining cool. Hunter finally released the cage on his laughter, and fell on his bed in a fit of giggles. _What the dust is so funny?_ Grey shrugged when I looked at him, and lay down on his bed without even bothering to change, falling to sleep in an instant. Hunter continued laughing as I collapsed on my own bed and put on my headphones to listen to music before going to sleep.

The next day I awoke to the sound of a shrill whistle from the dorm next to ours. _What the hell was that? _I looked to my teammates and saw that everyone except Royal was awake. Grey was laying in his bed already dressed; looking at his Scroll and Hunter was stretching as he got up. I now had a massive headache from the high pitched whistle, and I rubbed my head to try and rid myself of it. _That was an impressively loud whistle though, I will say that._

Grey sighed, getting up and taking his pillow and exiting the door. I heard a knock on the RWBY dorm next to us. The door creaked open.

"Hey Grey! How are you-"Ruby said, interrupted mid-sentence by the thwack of the pillow, presumably to the face. The door shut, and I heard Grey whistling badly as he walked back to lay on his bed. Hunter didn't even look phased as Grey came into the room, and started getting dressed.

"Why did you do that? It was kind of uncalled-for," I asked him as he picked up his scroll to look at the time.

"She woke all of my teammates up before it was necessary, and her whistle was annoying as shit. I thought I would be doing justice by whacking her with a pillow which is equally annoying." I raised an eyebrow.

"I'm fairly sure that she didn't do it out of malice, she seems like a decent person. She probably just did it without thinking and just wanted to wake up her team." Grey lowered his scroll to look at me.

"Intentions are nice, but at the end of the day the only thing that matters is what you did. I make people fully understand what they did by doing it to them. Only then can people fully understand what they did." _He is way different then what I remembered him to be. He was low key, and thought it was okay if someone made a mistake. Now…_

"Grey, did you give him that bullshit talk about how you do 'justice,'" Hunter asked, adjusting his green trench coat.

"It's not bullshit first off, it makes perfect sense. If someone does something wrong, do it to them and they won't do it again if they're not stupid." Grey replied, returning to his Scroll. Just as Hunter was about to make a snarky comment, the door burst open with a red eyed demon, seething in anger. Yang scanned the room for a second.

"Alright, which one of you hit my sister with a pillow," Yang asked, practically oozing her feelings of homicide.

"I did it," Hunter lied quickly, smiling. She punched her knuckles together, and her bracelets turned into full on gauntlets, covering both her fists. Yang launched herself at Hunter, and he disappeared.

A confused, "Huh?" escaped from Yang before she lost momentum and looked around for Hunter. He reappeared at the door behind her, coughing lightly. The blonde spun on her heels, stopping to look and point at me.

"I'll deal with you later," she said ominously before chasing after Hunter. Royal yawned as she woke.

"Why is everyone yelling," she asked through half open eyes, propping herself on her elbows.

"To be honest, I have absolutely no idea," I answered, still wondering what Yang's earlier threat was about.

"I recommend that you two get dressed by the way, class starts in 15 minutes," Grey said calmly, despite the situation.

"Mr. Sera, would you care to tell me just how the Faunus won this battle," Professor Port asked me, waking me from my nap with a start.

"Night vision," I said automatically. Professor Port raised a bushy eyebrow, but continued his lecture. Before I put my head down to go back to sleep, Jaune nudged my left side.

"How'd you know that? You looked like you were asleep," he whispered.

"I took a guess. What is the one noticeable advantage every single Faunus has over humans," I asked him quietly.

"Well… Night vision," He said after pondering for a second.

"Exactly, now while it could've been a different advantage, there are only three battles that I know of where the Faunus have ever won. The only one where they had the advantage was where they were attacked at night, and were able to use their night vision to win. Don't they teach you this stuff at school here in Vale?" A sweat broke out on his face.

"Well uh… of course." _Weird, but it's not really my business to ask how he doesn't how something that I learned literally years ago in school. I did that mostly by reflex too, I forgot about it until now._

The rest of the day was uneventful, at least until we had combat training with Ms. Goodwitch.

"Will Ms. Branwen and Mr. Sera please step down to the arena," She asked, deciding for us to be the last combatants of the day. I picked up my katana that was next to me, and walked down to the arena.

Ms. Goodwitch blew the whistle, and the fight started. Royal and I circled, waiting for an opening. I attacked first, charging my railgun with 50% of my battery and opening with a blast to the face from it that brought her Aura down to 95%. Yang and Hunter cheered me on as I continued to blast her from long range, eventually bringing her to 70%. The trigger clicked, and didn't fire anything. _Crap, I need the rest of the battery so that I can stun her when she gets close. _

I saw her bring up the shotgun to fire it, and I used my ability. Time slowed, and I saw the shots coming towards my chest. I narrowly dodged the bullets and transformed my weapon to its whip form. I used my ability again. _50% chance to hit? Everywhere? I should probably wait; if I miss she'll be able to hit me while I'm vulnerable with her shotgun. _Royal continued to charge at me, and I waited and launched the whip at her midsection. It barely nicked her as she dodged to the right, bringing her down to 55% and she hit me more 10% of my Aura with her shotgun. _Damn she's fast, I think I need to bait her out with the whip to beat her though, I can't use my katana to hit her, and the railgun wouldn't be able to bring her down even if I hit every shot. Only problem is, I can only use it once, if the enemy isn't stupid they'll never grab it again._

The whip sprang up as I jerked it up in front of her, and she fell for the bait, grabbing it with her open hand. I sent all of my electricity into the katana, paralyzing her and causing her to fall to the ground. I walked over and pulled out Excalibur, holding it to her throat. An arc of electricity sparked across her hand, and I sucked out the electricity with my open hand.

"Do you surrender," I asked her, still holding the blade. She sighed.

"I surrender to the cheapest of all strategies," She answered, rolling her eyes. Silence rolled across the arena as I removed my weapons, and put away Excalibur and the katana. I offered a hand to her and she accepted it.

"That is seriously the cheapest, most dick-move strategy that I've ever seen though, all you did was have me hold the chain and basically electrocute me," She said smiling. I shrugged.

"Don't hold the chain next time?" I offered to her as we walked out of the arena.

"You're a cheater!" Weiss told me, pointing to me as we walked out. I raised an eyebrow.

"I think you're just angry that I did pretty much the exact same thing to you a few days ago." Her face reddened, and Ruby put a hand on her shoulder. Weiss deflated and looked to her.

"Crimson didn't do anything wrong, and they never said he couldn't do that. Why not forget what he did to you a couple days ago? He wasn't trying to be mean." Ruby pointed out, defending me.

"Yeah! Take that you snooty princess!" Hunter added, resting an elbow on my shoulder. Weiss' face reddened yet again.

"Sometimes Hunter, I wonder if you physically cannot stop yourself from saying the dumbest things. Sorry about that Weiss." Grey said apologizing.

"Do I need to beat up Hunter again," Yang asked Weiss, pounding her fists together.

"No, I'll be making sure that he doesn't say anything stupid. Let's go." Royal said, dragging Hunter by his arm out the door.

"Well uh… bye." Grey said, chasing after them.

"I think they just ditched you." Blake said blatantly. I scratched the back of my head.

"Yeah… They did…"

"So I was just wondering if your team wanted to have dinner with us. To make up for me trying to kill you a few days ago." Yang said nervously. _I've only really known her for three days, but she was incredibly confident for all three of them, defending her sister to the point where she was willing to hurt me very badly. What caused her to suddenly lose that confidence? Whatever._

"Sure, I'll text them now." I pulled out my scroll, and sent a message to my team to see if they would eat with team RWBY. The response was almost instantaneous, with a unanimous yes from all of them.

"They said sure, where are we going?"

Yang smiled, answering, "A place called Shopkeep's Pizzeria. Best pizza place known to man. Be sure to come at 5!"

"I do not often agree with low class places, but the pizza there is satisfactory." Weiss agreed begrudgingly. Ruby snickered, eliciting a dirty look from the heiress.

"Thanks, I have to look for my team though, so bye." I said, waving a hand as I left to look for my teammates.

I found them in the gym, with Grey watching Royal and Hunter play ping pong.

"Who's winning," I asked Grey as he refed the game.

"They're equal, the next point is match." He replied as Hunter readied the ball to serve. Royal entered a defensive stance, and he served the ball lightly. Royal hit the ball back lightly, and this continued for several rallies, until Hunter upped the ante and slammed the ball down on her side. She was barely able to hit it back, and it landed on the right side of Hunter's part of the table. He smirked and hit the ball back across.

Just as it crossed the net, it disappeared. Royal looked confused as the sound of a ball hit the table, and it bounced off the floor. It reappeared a few feet away on the ground. Royal looked to Grey incuriously. He shrugged.

"You never said that he or you couldn't use Semblances, so that was a valid point. Hunter wins," Grey explained, declaring Hunter the winner. Hunter grinned, and fist pumped from his victory. Royal rolled her eyes, and placed her paddle on the table.

"I would consider THAT cheating for the record," Royal said as she sat down next to Grey on the bench.

"Well next time, be clearer," Hunter said placing down his paddle, and sitting next to Royal. I pulled out my scroll, checking the time.

"I think we can play one more game, but we have to leave immediately after that okay?" They all nodded, and Hunter got up.

"So do you want to face the champion," He asked snidely.

"HOW?!" Hunter's yell hurt my eardrums as we sat in the Bullhead with team RWBY. "I EVEN MADE THE BALL GO INVISIBLE! WHAT ARE YOU, SOME KIND OF SUPERHERO?"

"Hunter, you do realize that we go to a school that has pretty much the equivalent of super-humans, right," Blake asked him sarcastically. I thought I saw her bow twitched. _She has not taken that bow off since we arrived here, could she be hiding something under that? I'll have to ask her later._

"But still, how did you do it," He asked, turning to me. I held up my hands in innocence.

"I'm just really good at Ping-Pong. Nothing to see here." Hunter rubbed his chin in suspicion.

"I still think that you cheated somehow."

"Says the one that made the ball invisible," Royal said, bitter about her match with him. Yang and Ruby started to laugh, and then we all joined in with them, even Grey. It felt like we were actually connecting as a group of friends. I smiled and looked around. Today was going great, although it still felt like something was going to happen.

**A/N: And on that note, it is time to end this chapter. Be sure to leave a review, favorite, and/or a follow! It really helps if I get constructive criticism.**

**Thanks to –Falcyon- for editing, and make sure to check out his stuff!**


	7. Chapter 7 Yang

"I told you this place was good!" Yang said through a mouth full of pizza. We were all sitting inside the restaurant called, 'Shopkeep's pizza'. The entire table shared one huge pizza, filled to the brim with every kind of meat known to man. Everyone was digging in, even Weiss. _I would've taken her to be a vegetarian or something, that's surprising._

"This IS good pizza, I rank it approximately 5th on my chart of my favorite foods." Grey told us, grabbing another piece.

"Well what are the other four?" Ruby asked quizzically.

"Cheeri- Wheatios, Rice, cheese fries, and steak." He rattled out. Hunter nodded in agreement.

"But what about cookies?" Ruby asked with puppy dog eyes. Grey thought for a second.

"I'd put cookies at around 6, depending on the type."

"And don't forget about alpaca meat!" Royal interjected. Everyone except me gave her an odd look.

"My mom runs an alpaca zoo… and sometimes we have to put down one of them. They are mighty tasty, I can say that much." She added, staring off into space.

"So what do you guys think of your classes?" Weiss asked, obviously trying to steer the conversation away from eating hoofed mammals as she wiped pizza sauce off her face with a napkin.

"Boring, the only GOOD class is combat training!" Yang answered enthusiastically.

"I think history is pretty interesting." Blake replied quietly.

Hunter shoved another piece of pizza in his mouth, asking, "You don't talk much, do you?" Blake shrugged, continuing to read a book that she had brought. _Why wouldn't she read it on a Scroll? Aren't books kind of irrelevant now?_

"I like Math." Grey said thoughtfully. Everyone at the table including me gave him a look of disbelief.

"Yeah, see what I have to put up with?" Hunter said sarcastically.

"We all feel so sorry for you Hunter." Weiss replied, rolling her eyes.

"You should feel bad for me, I have Crimson as my partner, and he doesn't do anything." Royal joked.

"I wouldn't mind having Crimson as my partner." Yang said, leaning towards me across the table. _Well this just got super weird._

"Uh…" I responded intelligently.

"Yaaaaaaang. Don't do that!" Ruby begged her sister.

"What, I'm just saying that I wouldn't be against Crimson being my partner." Yang replied, smirking as she looked at me.

"I'll trade him for Blake any day of the week." Royal joked.

"Your loss then. Time to go to your new home Blakey." Yang said, pulling up Blake and bringing her around the table next to me.

"Well? Get up Crimson." Royal told me, smiling at the new development. I sighed, standing up and letting Blake sit down.

"Looks like both our partners ditched us Blake." I joked as Yang pulled me by the arm back over to where she and Blake had been sitting previously.

"So what would the team names be if Blake and Crimson did switch?" Ruby asked thoughtfully.

"Team Barge, and Team Rowkey." Grey answered.

"I don't think Rowkey is a word." Weiss said, rolling her eyes.

"RWBY isn't spelled that way either, but it's still your name right?" Grey countered.

"Fair enough." Weiss deflated, beaten.

"Anyhow, who wants to pay the check?" Hunter asked, looking around at us.

"I will." Grey and Weiss said simultaneously. They locked eyes for a second, in a battle of will. Grey lost eye contact first.

"Ha! I can outstare a cat Grey, you never had the chance! Looks like I'm paying the bill this time." Blake's bow twitched. _I know I saw that twitch, I'm not going insane. I'll ask her about it later. _

"Crimson, I hope you realize this, but if you haven't I'll tell you anyway." Hunter told me as we were alone in the dorm. Grey and Royal had gone to go play Ping-Pong, but we hadn't done our homework that was due tomorrow because we had procrastinated.

"What?" I asked, as I continued to write my essay on Grimm.

"I'm 99% sure that Yang likes you." He told me, bouncing a ball of the wall.

"Huh." I replied half listening. A ball hit me in the back of the head.

"Ow, what was that for?" I rubbed the back of my neck, looking at Hunter in annoyance.

"I do not think that you fully understood what I said. So now that I have your full attention let me repeat what I just said. I'm 99% sure that Yang, the blonde bombshell next door, likes you." He said, picking the ball off the ground.

"Why would you think that?" I asked him frowning as I returned to my essay.

"At this point, I'm pretty sure you're freaking blind. Number 1." He said, walking over to a wall and flipping out a chalkboard. _We have one of these? Why wasn't I ever told this?_

"She actually considered whether or not we were serious about calling you boyfriend and girlfriend." Hunter made a t-chart, with one side saying, 'would bang', and the other saying, 'wouldn't bang'. He put a tally mark under, 'would bang'.

"Yang also asked you out to dinner, another sign." He added another tally, making it two.

"Not only that, she asked you to come to a pizza place, meaning that she has good taste in food, and shares the same type of food that you like." Hunter slashed the chalkboard again, bringing it up to 3.

"Dinner was also a big clue, for two reasons. One was that she, 'wouldn't mind being your partner', and that she was also willing to ditch her own partner for you." Hunter finished the tally, bringing it up to 5. I sighed.

"I think you forgot several things. Yang is also a prankster, she could've done anyone of these things as a joke, or to prove something. I also think that you're making mountains out of molehills, maybe she was just trying to be nice if she wasn't trying to prank me or prove a point." I pointed out.

"Well fine, but don't forget about her boobs. A point for each one." He said, putting down two more tallies under and flopping on his bed, staring absentmindedly at the ceiling. I shook my head.

"Saying Yang likes me is the same as saying that Royal likes you." I joked.

"You never know Crimson, it could happen." He said in a jokingly serious tone.

"It'll happen around the same time that Yang asks to marry me according to you."

Blake took her ear away from the door, shaking her head and walking back quietly to her dorm room.

"Well? Anything interesting?" Yang asked Blake as she walked in after opening the door with her Scroll.

"Hunter's figured it out, but Crimson doesn't believe him." Yang sighed, looking downtrodden.

"If it makes you feel any better, I thought you were being pretty obvious too."

"I've been told that I'm a fairly oblivious person, and I saw it too." Ruby added, writing in her diary.

"You don't feel a shred of remorse for listening in on a private conversation between Crimson and Hunter? None?" Weiss asked in disbelief.

"Not really, this is need to know stuff." Blake responded, sitting on her bed.

"It's important to know exactly what's going inside the minds of your target, because then you can plan accordingly and strike when the time is right." Blake continued.

"Whatever, but if I catch you listening into any of my private conversations, I will personally kill you." Weiss threatened.

"Oh don't worry Weiss, there's no reason to… yet." Yang said half-jokingly. Half.

Several days passed uneventfully, except for Yang getting seemingly more comfortable with me. It started out with her just asking for help on homework, and ended up with us somehow going to a carnival together.

_I still don't believe that Hunter got these tickets in a raffle… I feel like he's setting us up. Whatever, I'm not going to turn down an opportunity to go to an amusement park. _

"So where should we go first?" Yang asked enthusiastically.

"Well let's look at that map." I said pointing over to a large Scroll mounted on a wall.

"We can go to… uh… the Red Sun Dragon? Really? That's a ride? No, what about Mr. Bone's Wild Ride?" I looked over at Yang, who had scrunched up her face in thought. I had to admit, she did look kind of cute… _Wait, what am I thinking? Me and her? What a joke…_

"What about the Adder? I've heard good things about that one." Yang suggested.

"Sure, why not?"

"That was fun! What did you think?" Yang asked me. I felt the urge to vomit from the intensity of the ride, but I tried to stay strong. "I'll take that as a, 'I really liked that ride' then." She joked. _I can fall from extreme heights and not break a sweat, but that rollercoaster was just freaking insane._

"Yeah, let's go on it again." I said sarcastically. She laughed, and helped me out of the ride.

"Want to go on something slightly slower?" She smirked, and I nodded in agreement.

She dragged me across the pavement to a kiddy rollercoaster named "Mister Panda's Wacky Adventure."

"Haha Yang. Very funny."

"What do you have in mind then?" She asked smiling. I thought for a second.

"What about..." We went onto pretty much every ride in the park, finally landing us on the Ferris wheel after eating some overly expensive amusement park food. It was night by the time we had gotten on the ride, and most of the visitors had gone home, or back to their dorms.

"I've never seen the stars these clearly before. Apparently all the lights in Mistral creates pollution that makes it hard to see them." I explained as I looked through the top of the carriage. Yang nodded, shivering.

"Hey uh, do you want my jacket?" I offered, seeing that she was cold. She glared at me for a second, but then looked away nodded, defeated. I silently handed her my jacket after a small amount of fumbling. She then sighed against my right shoulder, sighing softly. _Uh... Okay..._ My right hand moved, trying to decide where to put itself as my nervousness level increased.

It finally rested on her right shoulder, and we waited in silence for a second.

"Do you ever miss home?" Yang asked me after a minute as we neared the peak of our ride.

"Not really, didn't have any friends, unless you count Pyrrha who I still don't know all that well now anyway." I answered. Yang's face frowned.

"What about your parents?" I sighed.

"They're dead."

"Oh. Is it okay if I ask how they died?"

"Sure, I was there when it happened and I've gotten over it." I cleared my throat. "They died in a car crash when I was about 4. I was in the car at the time, in the backseat."

"Isn't it almost impossible for cars to crash now?"

"Well... almost impossible. As it turns out, this one was very susceptible to electric changes within the car's computer of any kind. Basically, too much or too little electricity is very bad. For whatever reason, they didn't include any regulator for the power."

"Oh Monty, you didn't crash the car did you?" Yang asked me in horror.

"Just wait." I asked her, raising my left arm in defense. "My dad also for whatever strange reason was letting me play with, what were supposed to be educational batteries. Some crap about how it helps your kid get smarter or something. Anyway, since I'm going to assume that you know my Semblance, you can guess what happens next."

"I'm sorry." Yang said simply.

"Doctors say that I was lucky, whacked my head really hard when we collided with the truck." I sat for a moment, contemplating.

"I've never told anybody else this before, but you to keep this a secret, okay?" Yang nodded, her brow furrowing again. Damn, why was that so cute? Do I-

"While I've never been sure how I got this, I got this ability to kind of slow down time, and see the chance that something is going to happen." I explained.

"That's pretty cool." The carriage halted as our ride stopped and we got out. I helped her up off the bench, still with my arm across her shoulder.

"Yeah... I guess it is." I replied. She laughed as we made our way back to the Bullhead transport building.

"So... are we together now?" Yang asked me devilishly.

"Uh... sure." I answered, not really sure what to say.

"So that means I can do this right?" Yang stopped me, looking me in the eyes. I felt my heart pound as she came closer to my face. Time seemed to slow down, but I was pretty sure that wasn't my ability. Maybe it was. I couldn't focus on anything except the beautiful girl leaning toward me, anyway. Not that I minded. As the world melted around us, Yang's lips brushed up against mine-

"Bleeeeeeeh." An alpaca said behind me. _Oh Dust damn it._

"Did you think I forgot, _friend?_" Qrow asked me sarcastically while sitting with his legs dangling over a food stand.

"Yang, we should probably go now." I pulled her gently towards the exit.

"Hey Uncle Qrow!" She yelled to him, smiling and waving. I started to walk slightly quicker. _No, no,no, don't ruin this you kooky bastard._

"AND NOW YOU'RE DATING MY NIECE?" He yelled in response, teleporting in front of me in my face and stopping me in my tracks.

"Yes he is!" Yang responded, pulling my head into her chest. . _Can't... think..._

"Have you told your FATHER?" He asked in disbelief.

"No, it just became official now! But I will!" She said defensively.

"Well! Okay then... I love you! Bye!" Qrow disappeared, along with the alpaca. Yang pulled my head out of her chest, and laughed.

"What did you do to make Uncle Qrow so mad?" She asked me as we started walking to the Bullhead station.

"Well you see..."

"Hey guys." I yawned to my teammates as I walked into the dorm.

"So how did it go?" Royal asked smiling at me as she sat at a desk, doing homework.

"All in all, pretty good. Your dad showed up though, during an INTERESTING moment to say the least." I told her as I stretched myself out onto my bed.

"So I was right?" Hunter asked with a grin.

"Yep." I answered.

"Hand it over Grey, looks like I win." Hunter told Grey, gesturing with his hands to give him money. Grey sighed, reaching into his jacket and pulling out what looked to be 20 lien.

"Damn you Hunter." Grey said deflated as he handed over the money to him.

"You guys BET on whether we would go out?" I asked them incredulously.

"Yes." Grey answered, continuing to play on his Scroll.

"And you bet that I WOULDN'T Grey? I feel betrayed." He shrugged.

"I did that because I ALSO bet Royal 20 dol- lien that you would. Hand it over." Grey commanded Royal, sticking his hand left hand out.

"Fine, take your blood money." Royal grumbled, grudgingly giving him the money.

"I'm not sure whether to be sad, or impressed that you managed to con both of them." I told Grey in a disconnected manner.

"Doesn't matter, I made a profit today." Grey emotionlessly responded.

"True, and I'm going to put on my pajamas." I told the dorm, getting up to go to the bathroom to get dressed, bringing along my pajamas.

"You do realize I don't care, right?" Royal informed me as I walked to the bathroom.

"Yes, I'm sure Yang would appreciate it if I stripped in front of you." I joked.

"Well she is my cousin, so she probably wouldn't mind." She retorted, rolling her eyes. I shook my head as I walked into the bathroom.

"So you and Yang are... together?" Pyrrha asked me on the way to breakfast. Everyone else had been asleep except Grey, and I was hungry.

"Yep." I answered, and she nodded, looking slightly downcast.

"You're going out with Jaune right?" She looked at me horrified.

"Well uh- me and him- you see- …no." She finished with a deflated sigh. _So it's like that huh? I really hope I wasn't that oblivious. I'll ask Hunter to give him a wake-up call._

"Okay. This is... nice weather we're having right now." I offered her.

"Yes, yes it is." She agreed. There was more silence for a minute.

"So have you dueled since last week? Almost everyone else has gone except you." I asked Pyrrha casually.

"No, I have not. I also noticed that you have not dueled in quite some time as well." Pyrrha smiled.

"Let's say... if I win, you have to ask Jaune out." She raised an eyebrow.

"And if I win?"

"You can... I don't know, ask for me to do one thing." I answered shrugging.

"Alright then, after breakfast."

I did however, encounter a small problem.

"What do you mean Yang has your weapons?" Pyrrha asked me confused.

"Well, technically I still have my katana, but Excalibur and my batteries are in my jacket, which Yang has."

"Why would- ah." Pyrrha realized and I nodded.

"It's kind of early to be calling people and asking them to give you your jacket. How about we just do this one for fun?" I offered Pyrrha as we went into the arena.

"That should be acceptable, Cri." _It has been a pretty long time since I've talked to Pyrrha. _I thought as she said my nickname.

"So you have not named your katana yet?" She asked, pointing to the weapon at my left hip.

"No, I haven't. Really haven't given it much thought." I said truthfully.

"What if we bet on its name?" Pyrrha suggested.

"Sure, as long as it sounds cool, I'm up for it." I drew the blade, examining it as I walked to my side of the arena.

"So why did you think you could win before you found out I didn't have two thirds of my weapons?" I asked her sarcastically.

"I believe that we are still one and one in terms of fights, correct?" Pyrrha answered, asking another question.

"True. This one will count as a regular fight, no reason to make it anything different." I said nonchalantly. _If I really need to, I can just pull electricity from the lights, but if it gets to that point I'm going to need to end it, because then she's just going to use the benches to her advantage as well._

"Alright, we start on 3. 1. 2. 3!" I yelled, charging at her. _I have no idea if my weapon is fucking magnetic. This is going to be interesting. _She started taking cheap shots at me, which I managed to avoid by using my ability and sidestepping them as they came. As soon as I got close enough, I changed my katana into whip form and used my ability.

_So I have a pretty high chance to hit her. That either means that it's not magnetic, or that she wants to make me think it's not magnetic. _I launched the whip at her, only to be blocked by her shield and create a large bang. The whip bounced off into the air and Pyrrha shoot at me, hitting me for 10% of my Aura and bringing it down to 90%.

I recovered my whip and slammed it down on Pyrrha's head for 15% of her Aura, bringing her down to 85%. After she recovered, Pyrrha charged straight at me, throwing her shield at me. _Crap. _I transformed the whip back into its katana form and I barely blocked the attack, sending it right back into Pyrrha's hands as she knocked my sword away with a powerful swing, and what felt like the use of her Semblance.

She knocked me to the ground, causing me to slide several feet away from her and lose 30% of my Aura. _Wow, I really am useless without my Semblance. This is pathetic. But I still have the trump card. _I reached my hand towards the ceiling, and sucked the electricity from the light above, creating a massive arc of red electricity as it came to me. _It's amazing how inefficient pulling electricity gets after just a few dozen feet. I might be able to shock her once, and it'll have to be dead on. If I miss, I lose the fight._

I got up, looking at the arcs of electricity race on my arms, and saw Pyrrha standing a few feet away, unsure of what to do.

"Never said I couldn't." I said, verbally defending myself despite my offensive stance. _Although, I don't have to physically touch her. I just need to touch her weapon. _I ran straight towards Pyrrha, and she didn't try to stop me, instead breaking out into laughter.

_Whatever it is, it can wait until I win this fight._ Just as I was about to hit Pyrrha with an enormous load of electricity, a bucket of water splashed on me from behind, essentially short circuiting me. _What the hell? _I turned around drenched and saw Hunter standing there with an empty bucket, grinning.

Grey chuckled a few feet away, sitting on a bench and playing on his Scroll.

"Very funny Hunter, thanks for that. Asshole." I told him as Pyrrha held her spear to my throat, still laughing.

"It looks like I win this time Cri." Pyrrha announced, lowering her spear.

"Yes, yes you do." I said, taking off my sheathe and placing my katana inside it. It hit the end with a _thunk_.

"So if I heard correctly, Pyrrha gets to name your katana, right?" Royal asked grinning.

"Yes, per the agreement she gets to name it something relatively dignifying." Grey replied without looking up from his Scroll.

"Well what're you going to name it?" I asked Pyrrha as I squelched in my wet clothes over to a bench.

"What about… Fulminō?" Pyrrha asked as she put her weapons on her back.

"Sure, why not? That actually sounds kinda cool." I shrugged and walked with my feet squishing back to my dorm so that I could get dry clothes.

I knocked on the door to team RWBY. There was the sound of pillows sailing across the room, and muffled yelling inside. Eventually a conclusion must have been reached, and a dreary eyed Yang opened the door, wearing a yellow tank top with a flaming heart on it, as well as black shorts. Her normally well maintained hair was in 'bed head mode', and she yawned. _It must be really hard for her to look bad._

"Hiii Crimsommmsom." She yawned out.

"Hey," I said smiling at her, "Did you just wake up? Isn't it, like noon?" She nodded drowsily.

"Yeaaap."

"Well sorry about that then." I apologized, "But could you give me back my jacket?" I asked her sheepishly.

"Sure... just give me one..." Yang fell forward, and I caught her as she snored into my chest.

"Hurk!" I exhaled quickly. Yang was pretty heavy_. That much muscle compressed on to her frame must really allow her to pack a punch._ I mentally facepalmed (seeing as my arms were currently being used as a bed by Yang). _No shit, she packs a punch._

"WHAT DID YOU DO?!" Weiss asked me in an accusing tone.

"Weiss, I'm sure he had a perfectly good reason for knocking out Yang." Ruby said defending me.

"Uh... I didn't do anything. I think she just fell asleep." I said, picking up Yang with considerable effort and walking over to her bed and laying her down.

"You still haven't explained how or why you knocked out Yang." Blake told me, reading a book called, "Ninjas of Love." _Looks smutty. Better not ask about it._

"I told you, I didn't knock her out! Look! She's sleeping peacefully! I don't know what you want from me!" I said pointing to a peacefully sleeping Yang.

_Grey's POV_

I beat another person online, bringing my rank up to #1 in Vale, and in the top 10 of Remnant for online poker. _So easy to make money this way, I wish it was this easy to make money on Earth. Sucks for me I guess._

_BOOM!_ I looked over to Hunter to see if he'd heard it. He nodded as another _BOOM! _resounded across the school. Royal looked unfazed, very badly trying to hide that she was looking at suggestive manga.

"Hunter, I thought Desino gave us a few days before we even had the possibility of Rogues."

"Well... you know what they say about relying on Desino..." Hunter added, getting his daggers out.

"Do NOT let anyone die near Crimson. We have that happen... well you know the drill." I trailed off, picking up my sword and activating my Semblance. I coughed up blood onto the floor as it activated, and I wiped my mouth.

"Are you guys okay?" Royal asked concerned.

"Yeah, just get ready. You're probably about to have the fight of your life."

**A/N: And that's all for this chapter! I was thankfully able to get this chapter out eventually after being sick (and still being sick) for pretty much an entire week.**

**Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and leave a follow, favorite and/or a review. You guys have no idea how much it means to me to get anyone of those three things, and a review especially helps since it constructive ones help me write better.**

**Thanks to -Falcyon- for editing, and make sure to check out his stuff as well.**


	8. Chapter 8 It Worked

I felt immense, burning pain on my chest and fell to the ground panting. What the hell?! The burning subsided after a second and I tore off my shirt to see what had caused it. A black X was now on my chest, each slash about a foot long.

"What the hell happened to you?" Blake asked me with a concerned face, putting down her book and looking at my chest.

"I don't know! This just kind of appeared out of nowhere." I told her, feeling the marks. Grey appeared in the middle of the room noiselessly and looked at me, and then my chest.

"Shit! Grab your jacket. We're going." Grey said urgently. I grabbed my jacket, and put it on as Grey opened the door to let in Hunter.

"Where and why are we going?" I asked them, looking to a confused team RWBY (except for the sleeping Yang).

"Earth." Grey replied simply, closing his eyes.

"Are you sure Grey?" Hunter asked concerned, "Because leading a Rogue here would be way easier to kill it."

"There's another problem." He answered, pointing to me.

"How am I a problem?" I asked confused.

I'll explain more in a second." He opened his eyes and grabbed me and Hunter's shoulders. Grey coughed a large amount of blood onto the floor, and then we disappeared.

We appeared in the middle of a torn apart house. The smell of rotten wood immediately assaulted my nose as our full sudden weight on the floor caused an ominous creaking noise. I looked around to see fungus growing out of small crevices around the room. There was a lone dusty picture frame that had shattered. The picture inside had long since been eaten away by mold.

It looked to be a very open two floor house, but I couldn't see the outside of it to make sure. We were in the middle of the foyer, and from where I was standing it looked to be a mansion, or at least the size of it. Two stairs led up to the second floor where there were several rooms, and broken planks stuck out of the railing and all around the walls from what looked to be an earthquake.

"Ah, good old Earth. Missed you buddy." Hunter announced, flopping on the dusty wooden floorboards.

"Come on, not now Hunter. The Rogue is going to come through any second-" Grey was cut off by a high pitched shriek, and a thing that would usually be kept in nightmares appeared above us, slamming into the ground where Hunter had been only a second before he had rolled to safety and stood up.

The beast slammed a tendril down at me, only to be met with Grey's scythe and loped off, sending the now detached appendage onto a piece of wood jutting out, impaling it. Woah, sharp. I should watch out for that. I drew Fulmino and was slammed through several walls into a bedroom by a tendril from the Rogue. I looked down and saw that I was scraped badly, and I felt my back bleeding, as well as my left leg being broken.. What the hell? My Aura should be blocking any kind of harm. Why am I bleeding?

I got up from the bed painfully and saw Hunter and Grey holding barely holding the Rogue off, each of them going at what looked to be superhuman speed, dodging and slashing the black beast. The only problem was, it was regenerating the limbs just as fast as they were cutting them off and it didn't seem to be running out. I moved forward painfully to try and help them, and was rewarded with excruciating pain to my leg. Crap, I can't help them. If I fire my railgun, I might hit them instead and from what I can see, Aura doesn't work here.

After what looked to be several superhuman exchanges, Hunter was finally hit and flew into a wall next to me after crashing through several of them. He fell to the ground hard, and I saw that his right arm was contorted in a strange and wrong way. He pushed himself up with his left, grunting in pain and tightened his hold on his dagger in his left hand. He gave me a weak smile.

"Don't worry, me and Grey have got this," came Hunter's wavering voice. Well that just makes me worry more. He charged towards the beast again and resumed the fight with Grey. Grey was somehow managing to not get hit a single time, and looked to have no intention of slowing down his attacks. Grey is insane. He hasn't been hit a single time and seems to be actually hurting it.

Grey constantly switched between his weapon's scythe form and sword form, slicing the monster whenever possible with its recoil enhanced swings, and Hunter dodged attacks with his Semblance, and switched his weapon to a short sword after his right arm was broken, allowing him to make slower, but harder attacks to make up for not being able to use his right dagger.

The battle had been raging for nearly ten minutes as Grey, Hunter and the Rogue fought. All of their attacks except Grey's had been slowed considerably, and the monster seemed to be on its last legs. I think they'll finally beat this guy. Unfortunately, right after thinking that Hunter once again made a mistake and was grabbed by one of its limbs, and I felt time slow as I saw him fly through the air. Oh god, he's going to be impaled on that plank! I can't even stop him! SHIT! Grey didn't see him being flung since he was on the other side of the rogue, and I knew that my voice wasn't going to reach Grey in time to stop him.

Time resumed and I heard a thunk as Hunter was impaled on the plank. Grey saw it as he made his way around the beast. His face contorted into a look of pure, unadulterated fury as his eyes changed from dark grey, to a lilac, and then to a dark red. Hunter weakly grabbed at the wooden plank protruding from his chest, and his eyes hardened for a moment, and then seemed to let go. Is Hunter... dead? Grey looked to the monster, and threw his sword against the wall, flicking his wrists and causing grey gauntlets to fly out.

A tendril flew into Grey, and he took the full force of it against his right palm that was glowing grey, making what looked like a tiny shockwave.

"I will not forgive you monster. I reserve this death only for those that I deem necessary to use it on. I am sorry for you however." Grey told the monster, and his eyes changed to green as he held the tentacle. Grey slammed his left gauntlet into the monster, firing a shotgun shell into it. The monster recoiled slightly, and then slammed itself into Grey. Grey was amazingly able to withstand the blow, and started methodically punching the Rogue, slow at first but gaining speed until he was a blur of fist and fire. With a final punch, his hand punched through the rubbery membrane and lodged there.

I was expecting the Rogue to retaliate, but instead it just stood there, unmoving as Grey concentrated with his eyes closed. Suddenly the monster kneeled, as what looked like random masses of the black goo it was made of appeared all over its body.

The monster fell to the ground, twitching slightly, and then turned to dust, leaving Grey coughing blood intensely while kneeling himself. I slowly picked myself up, using Fulmino's sheathe as a walking stick. As I walked over to Hunter, whose eyes were open slightly, and in other circumstances might've looked fine had there not been a broken right arm and a plank protruding through his chest.

"Why did he have to die?" Grey asked blankly, standing next to me and looking at his friend.

"I don't know! What the hell was that! What is this place?! And why do you have gauntlets that look exactly like Yang's?!" I asked fed up with him not answering anything.

"Not now Crimson. Help me, or leave for a minute. I need to bury Hunter." Grey said apathetically, pulling our dead friend off the plank with a sickening 'shlick' noise.

After we finished burying him in the overgrown garden in the back of the house, Grey placed a small cross above where his head had been buried. I looked at the left handed dagger that Hunter had used. It looked so small, but it looked almost as scary as Grey's strange sword, emanating a strange feeling from it.

"If only I had been using my Mind reader Semblance, I could have stopped him from dying. Of all the Semblances I have, I don't have one that allows me to go back in time" Grey said bitterly, turning over the dagger in his hand.

"And I suppose I owe you some explanations on what's happening. So let's walk and talk."

"Okay." I answered simply, hobbling up to him to walk in step, relying on my make shift cane to help me.

"So let's get down to the basics. Me, and previously Hunter are workers. I work for a god known as Desino, the decider of stories. He tells us workers what to do, and we make sure that the story of any universe stays on its course. The thing we fought is called a Rogue, their entire reason for living is to screw up the course of a universe." Grey explained as we walked along a path out of the dense forest.

"So why would it target me?" I asked him, confused.

"Well that's where things get complicated. Our- my job is to make sure that you don't die. In this universe, we need to make sure that no Rogue or Deserter ruins the story and sends the whole universe into chaos."

"Well why am I being targeted? Why is it important that I live or die?" I asked hopelessly, thinking of Hunter. Grey sighed.

"Desino, my boss, knows how stories will play out. I don't know how any of the ones he sends me on will turn out, but he personally always knows. He thinks that you are going to be targeted for approximately the next 3 years of your life, and it is ou- my job to make sure that you don't die at the wrong time."

"So it's okay if I die, just at the wrong TIME?" I asked him incredulously.

"Everyone dies, it's just a matter of time." Grey said. There was a silence for a minute as we walked along the path.

"The reason that Hunter risked his life for you, and didn't have a second thought about going in even after his arm was broken is because you, like me are different."

"And how is that?" I asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Well…" Grey sighed. "You and I are the only ones with a special kind of Semblance that are still alive." He explained sadly.

"And that would be?"

"It's complicated." Grey told me rubbing his temples.

"You might as well tell me, I don't think we're waiting for anything."

"Well this might be a little hard for you to take, but you have something known as the Semblance of Power. Whenever someone dies within 20 feet of you, you gain their Semblance." Grey said quietly. I laughed.

"Very funny, but I'm pretty sure I just have power over electricity." I told him, assuring myself I couldn't have THAT kind of twisted Semblance.

"Let me prove it to you." I felt my limbs stop, and then my left hand raised itself in front of my face. It disappeared. What the hell?

"How'd you do that?!" I asked him as my body returned to my control and I reappeared.

"You got the Ghost Semblance, Hunter's." He told me quietly.

"But... you can only have one Semblance. That's impossible." I remembered the very little schooling I had on Semblances.

"Well sadly, you don't." Grey informed me as we resumed our walk, "You actually have four Semblances, although I doubt you thought of the others as them. You have the Power, Clarity, Gambler, and now the Ghost Semblance." He recounted. "You got Clarity and Gambler from your Mother's and Father's death, and were born with Power."

"If there's anything I know about Semblances like these in books, there's a catch." I said, shaking my head.

"That's the one huge drawback to your Semblance. The more Semblances that you gain, the more your homicidal urges will increase so that you can gain more Semblances. The exact amount that it is increased depends on how strong your combined Semblances are, but luckily for you it would take around three deaths of people with Semblances near you for you to get anywhere near a noticeable level."

"But that doesn't make sense. I would never kill anyone just to get more Semblances." I reassured Grey. He shook his head sadly.

"You can't control it, that's why they're urges. The best you can hope for is for people not to die next to you, and to stay far away from funerals."

"Holdup, you said you also had a similar Semblance, what's yours?"

"I have the Thief's Semblance. It allows me to use the Semblance of any person that I touch. The drawback is that as you have seen, my body takes a toll for any number of Semblances that I use, and it gets worse the more I use at once. I have hundreds of Semblances, but I can't remember what they are and some of them are potentially dangerous."

"You can't remember them?" I asked slightly annoyed.

"Yeah... that's another drawback. My memory is significantly decreased in general. I remember the most important ones by heart. Blink, Kinetic, Seer's, and Radiator's Semblance." He listed out. "I use some other passive one's by reflex as well. My right hand also glows grey whenever I change what Semblances I use, which makes it pretty obvious."

"I can guess all of the ones except Radiator's, what is that?"

"It's ironically the Semblance I was born with in a way. This is Earth. A completely different universe than Remnant with its own set of rules. You may have noticed that your Aura isn't working, and that's the reason that Hunter was so easily killed." How can he talk so easily about one of his best friends being killed so easily like that?

"You HAVE Aura, the reason that it doesn't work here is because of the rules of this universe." Grey explained.

"Rules of the universe?"

"Yes, currently we're in a universe focused on an Earth that was destroyed by radiation. Here Semblances work, but Aura doesn't. In low doses, it doesn't hurt, but large doses like what happened here wiped out the entire planet."

"How does Aura not work?" Grey shrugged.

"Just the rules, I didn't make them, and don't even enforce them."

"And what's radiation? I've never heard of that before."

"Think of it like a kind of disease. Well, it's really just when atoms release electrons as they deteriorate - crap, right, Remnant isn't as advanced in atomic theory. Think of it like this. Everyone has a little radiation in them. It allows all living things to… well… live. But only a few people out of any given number have a dangerous amount of it. Everything on Earth gives it off, even some rocks. The part where it gets dangerous is when something has a high amount of it. It causes sickness, masses, and death. Most of the time it's fairly slow, and people are already near dead when they die from it. My Semblance happens to speed it, and increase the pain at which it happens. There's a reason why I didn't just instantly kill the Rogue with it, the pain in those few short seconds is unimaginable, and I would only subject the worst of monsters to it."

"That's pretty disturbing."

"Just be glad it can't happen in your universe. The only reason that me and Hunter didn't give it off in your universe is because we trained to do it. If you ever wanted to know how Faunus were created, look no further. They are creatures of radiation, one of the first workers that came from Earth to Remnant accidentally didn't take precautions and created the Faunus."

"But I thought that radiation just made people sick and die."

"I hadn't finished. Radiation is really quite useful. In Remnant's case, it created a mutation where Faunus were formed. On Earth we use it to relative success in healing people of cancer, which can ironically be caused by radiation. We use it to fuel cities, and last of all it is one of the things that make the atomic bomb so dangerous."

"Woah, slow down." I put my hands up.

"What is a mutation, or cancer, or an atomic bomb for that matter?"

"I keep forgetting that Remnant is ahead on some technology, but way behind on genetic and atomic science. Think of your hair color, and then your Mom and Dad's hair color. Now let's say that for some strange reason, you and your wife have a kid with grey hair, right off the bat. That would be considered a mutation, a small one, but still a mutation. Something that's different and unique about you. A more noticeable one might be an extra hand, or a tooth where it isn't supposed to be. Mutations aren't inherently bad or good, they're just evolutionary changes designed to- this is getting really long winded. Let me just say that mutations are just something different about a person or animal."

"And cancer and the atomic bomb?" I asked him, curious.

"The atomic bomb is the most feared weapon known to man on Earth or Remnant for two reasons. The initial blast of it is huge, and can take out of a few city blocks, and the radioactive fallout from the blast covers huge expanses, and can go much farther than the actual blast. I've already told you what radiation is, and cancer can be caused by that, but it isn't always. Think of cancer like a mutation, but always bad. It's a piece of your own body, but it slowly kills you as it replaces you."

"This is... depressing. This is mighty uplifting to say the least."

"Hunter's death is sad Crimson, but we move on. We buried him, we mourned, and now I have to make sure that you know everything possible." Grey responded seriously.

"I'm telling you this on the off chance that someone from Earth is dumb enough to bring an atomic bomb to Remnant. I've already had one universe thrown into chaos because I couldn't stop it in time, I don't want to make this one a repeat. And this by the way, is an example of what radiation can do." Grey told me, outstretching his arm to indicate a desolate city. Buildings were falling down, and what appeared to be a huge white pencil had chunks taken out of it.

"Funnily enough, this is one of the most stable universes. This isn't my Earth though, I just wanted one where I knew no one would be. This is what Vale, or Mistral could look like if we're unlucky." Grey looked at me.

"Unless you have any other questions, that's it. I will not be able to answer once we go back to Remnant. There is too high a chance someone will hear something important, and throw the world into chaos. Even with the limited knowledge I just told you, someone could realize something bad that they normally wouldn't have thought of, and might get ideas. The only reason I'm telling you, is because it's my job to make sure you don't die until it's necessary, and knowing about this might save your life."

"So just mentioning something about this to anyone could be bad?" He nodded.

"And there's a few more things. Your universe technically has radiation too, but it manifests doesn't spawn in anywhere near the quantities most Earths do. Dust is equivalent to one of the main ways to generate radiation on Earth, something called uranium. Dust is considerably more useful from an energy standpoint, and is more efficient in every way, as well as having the added bonus of not being harmful to humans in anyway, unless of course if it is intentionally used for that. The only nice thing about radiation, is that it is incredibly potent in terms of damage when used as a weapon."

"So, Aura and Dust is the opposite of radiation?"

"Sort of, but in comparison they do the same thing in pretty much every universe."

"Well that's kind of weird. Can you explain it to me more later?"

"I will not be able to explain anything about about other worlds, but I can tell you more about the possible uses of Aura when we get back. And make sure that you don't tell anyone, or show anyone your Semblance. It tends to scare people when they find out the possibility that you might take their Semblance when they die."

"Oh, okay." He reached out and put a hand on my shoulder, causing us to disappear into darkness.

"Mr. Aes, and Mr. Sera. Would you mind explaining the recent events that have happened?" Professor Ozpin asked us as he sat at his desk. Grey and him locked eyes for a second, and Grey's eyes turned brown.

"Mr. Sera, would you kindly leave?" Ozpin asked me as they continued their internal battle.

"Yeah I guess, I'll escort myself out. Not like I have a broken leg or anything." Grey waved it off without breaking eye contact.

"You'll be fine now, just don't stress it too much."

"Well... okay." I hobbled out of the room, walking back to my team, previously known as team CHRG, but would now be simply be known as team CRG.

I hobbled back to the dorm room and opened the door to the alarmed face of Royal.

"What happened?! Where's Grey and Hunter?!" Royal asked me immediately.. I sat down on my bed, my leg already beginning to heal and put away Fulmino and Excalibur, grabbing an extra shirt I had and donning it.

"Grey is upstairs, and Hunter's..." I drew a ragged breath. "Hunter is… dead." I laid down the news sighing, and taking out his dagger, looking at it.

"You're joking, right?" Royal laughed a little, and I looked at her seriously. Her face darkened.

"He's really... dead? How could that happen?!" She asked me in disbelief. Her eyes grew wide as I talked on.

"Grey took us somewhere so that the monster wouldn't hurt anyone, and that place didn't have Aura, which is why my leg was broken, and Hunter died." I explained sadly.

"Monster? No Aura? Crimson, what're you talking about?"

"A monster was chasing after me, which is why I have a huge scar on my chest now," I said, pulling up my shirt so she could see the scar tissue, "and Grey teleported us to a place where Aura didn't work so that the monster wouldn't have a chance to hurting or killing anyone else." I dropped my shirt back down and studied Royal. She was standing completely still, like a statue.

"Why wouldn't he just teleport you slightly outside of the school?" She asked, narrowing her eyes.

"I don't know the full details, but I don't think that he could've because of the way he killed it. Teleporting us to that place ensured that it wouldn't go out of hand might be the reason, but you should ask him for the full details." I told her, lying down on my bed. There was a hefty knock at the door. Royal waved me down after I started to get up, and opened the door to a concerned Yang.

"Is Crimson okay?" She asked, scanning the room.

"Yeah, I'm fine." I said, waving at her and smiling. Yang made a hurt noise and rushed over to me, scooping me up and smothering me in a bear hug. I could almost forget what happened today, just sitting here being hugged being by Yang.

"How could you do that to me?! You scared the crap out of me!" Yang told me, pulling me closer. I wrapped my arms around her as well.

"Sorry, monsters trying to kill you don't exactly care about girlfriends sadly." I joked.

"Well, they should. And where's Grey and Hunter?" She asked, still not pulling away.

"Grey's in Ozpin's office, talking to him, and... Hunter's... dead..." I trailed off.

"Oh my god, are you okay?" Yang asked, pulling away slightly and looking at me with concern in her beautiful lilac eyes.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Grey looked to be okay too. Are you okay Royal?" I asked, moving my head slightly to look at her as she sat on the floor, crying silently into her hands. Yang released me, moving to embrace Royal.

"It's fine now, you're okay." Yang told her, hugging her close in her motherly warmth. Royal looked a little surprised at first, but gave in and embraced her, crying hard. As Royal's wails echoed through the halls of Beacon, I lay down on my bed, lost in thought. What's going to happen now?

Ozpin's office

"Why exactly do you think that Crimson will be any different than the others you have killed?" Ozpin asked Grey as he sat in a chair in front of the desk.

"He just... is. The others showed higher signs of aggression than he does right now, and he has 4 semblances." Grey replied.

"I hope you're sure, you cannot afford anymore losses if what you told me is true." Grey nodded.

"I won't. My boss is already sending in another one. You do understand the situation, correct?" This time Ozpin nodded grimly.

"I do not think your team will appreciate having Hunter replaced so quickly, you should not have them come in so soon."

"It's a her, and I'll make sure to wait. Her cover is that she's an old friend of mind, highly skilled in the art of fire. The last part isn't a cover though, she scares the shit out of me and she's my sister. I still don't know why he's sending HER of all people, because of how chaotic she can be."

"Just make sure that no one else gets killed. I like to keep my students, and them dying isn't exactly a morale increaser, as well as I just don't like having people I know dying."

"Understood." Grey said, walking out of the office.

"And Mr. Aes, if you have any problems with your partner's death, you can feel free to come to me." Grey looked back at Ozpin briefly, and shook his head.

**A/N: And that is it for this chapter. Took me a while to make, I don't really deal with death all that much, and so it is very hard for me to write it.**

**Besides that, thank you for reading and please leave a follow/favorite, and/or a constructive review. They go a long way and help me improve my writing.**

**Thanks to -Falcyon- for editing, make sure to check out his stuff as well.**

**WARNING, LONG EXPLANATIONS BELOW. DON'T READ IF YOU WANT TO FIGURE IT OUT YOURSELF.**

**And now for an explanation of how radiation and Aura works in this fic for future reference.**

**Aura and/or Dust could be considered the 'brother' to radiation, or another interpretation if you want to think of it like that. Aura on Earth has no effect on the surroundings, but high amounts of radiation on Remnant is catastrophic, having caused the creation of Grimm and Faunus.**

**Radiation is far more dangerous than Aura in its pure form, but Aura can be just as dangerous if used correctly. It also only spawns naturally on Remnant, there's nothing like uranium that can be used to create radiation.**

**Nothing else to really say on radiation/Aura/Dust, and if you have a question or think something is wrong, leave a review or shoot me a PM.**

**Lastly, for those wondering, I will leave the three Semblances that Crimson currently has.**

**Ghost, allows the user to be invisible or make another nearby object invisible. Also allows them to increase the speed of the object slightly. Runs off a timer, and you can only use it for a certain amount of time in an hour.**

**Clarity Semblance allows the person to slow their perception of time, and that's about it.**

**Gambler's Semblance allows them to see the chance of completing an action, and works off the truth of something, not their actual knowledge. One example is that Crimson knew that he was not able to hit Pyrrha, but had no idea why until he found o**ut her Semblance.

**EDIT: Bonus points if you can tell me who I am quoting for the name of the chapter.**


	9. Chapter 9 Ashes from Hunter

I sat on the decrepit bench next to Hunter's grave, wearing my black jacket in honor of him and eating a sandwich as I spaced out. **Heh, I'll walk up behind him and scare him.** I heard behind me in the most terrifying person I've ever known's head. _Already? It's only been a week and a half. Fucking Desino sending her._

"Hello Ashe." **Shit, he does have that stupid mind thing doesn't he?**

"Why hello my _dear _brother. How are you today?" Ashe asked me, sitting down on the bench, looking at me with a slightly crazed smile. She set down her massive weapon, appropriately known as the Fucker Upper.

"I'm okay, but sadly Hunter's dead, which I'm assuming you know since you're here to replace him as my partner." I told her as I took bites out of my sandwich.

"Well of COURSE I know silly? Why do you think I came?" She asked me exasperated.

"I'm pretty sure you came because Desino likes to fuck with me among other things." I answered, swallowing my sandwich and taking another bite.

"Desino is gay?!" She asked me in a fake surprised voice.

"Yes, just like you." I answered coldly. **Man Grey is mean.**

"Big brother, you are so harsh." Ashe said with a fake pouty face.

"Could be worse, I could comment on your choice of weapon name." She picked up her weapon, jumping off the bench, and swinging around the flame thrower flail.

"You know it makes sense, because it fucks everything up!" She yelled, obliterating a large tree and sending it careening over the forest.

"True, but you didn't even base it off Latin, you just randomly call it the Fucker Upper. Who does that? People on Remnant don't name their weapons stuff like that. They name it off flowers, or what they think of as their Old Language for a few."

"Yes Little Greggy, I can see why people would fear the flame flail, 'butter cup' alllllll across the land." **I know he hates that name.**

"You know I hate that name. It's stupid." I told her annoyed.

"Well then at least I gave SOMETHING the correct name apparently." She said dryly.

"That hurt, right there." I said pointing to my heart with my sandwich.

"I'll be sure to tell Desino that your feelings got hurt." She said, torching a small tree with her weapon.

"Don't set the forest on fire, it was hard enough to get this place to be stable." I warned her as she set another small tree on fire.

"But fire is just so much FUN!" She yelled, using her Semblance for emphasis, throwing a massive fireball into the air.

"Set sat down next to me, sweating profusely."

"Better now?" I asked her as she sat panting. _At least the only nice thing is she can't use fire for very long before either running out of breath, or cooling her mood down._

"So uh, how'd Hunter die?" She asked me, putting her weapon back on the table.

"Rogue." **Well that's a shitty way to die. **She thought as her face turned to one of **empathy?**

"He fought hard, he broke his left arm before finally getting thrown against a broken plank." I explained, taking his dagger out of my left jacket pocket.

"This Crimson guy must be something for him to die for. What is he like?" She asked curious.

"The hopes is that he we keep him alive and he slowly gains Semblances, as well as learning to control the urges. But every time I've ever seen someone get past 7 Semblances... it get's bad. As a person, he's pretty nice. Slightly useless, which I guess is better than the alternative, but nice."

"Oh yeah, Desino sends you to kill those guys right? The Sylar ones? I guess that would make you Peter then." I rolled my eyes.

"Yes, they are like the guy from Heroes, and my Semblance is like Peter's. I don't think he gets massive migraines, coughs blood, and occasionally nose bleeds though. Sylar's power is still worse, even without all the downsides because of the want to take people's powers."

"Do you ever get depressed, just going around killing them?" Ashe asked thoughtfully.

"Not really. Most of the time they attack me first. The only one I was preemptive on was Fred, and I knew that he was about to snap and about to attack me."

"So in your eyes, you think you're doing justice by killing them?" She finally asked me.

"Well, yeah. I mean why would I kill them unless they did something wrong? There's no reason to. Crimson hasn't done anything remotely homicidal, so why would I kill him?" Ashe sighed.

"Possibly because he's your friend?"

"Just because they're your friend, doesn't mean they should be living after going around and killing people to take their Semblances. I will put him down if I need to." **He honestly thinks that?**

"Yes, I do think that putting down serial killers is the right thing to do, even if they are your friend. First time I gave the guy a chance, and then he slaughtered team RWBY, and all of Beacon. I'd prefer that did not happen again."

A small 'oh' came from Ashe.

"Well I think it's time to introduce you. The team should take it relatively okay, and I'll make sure to tell you if any of them get any feelings of undue aggression towards you because of Hunter's death."

"Thank you Little Greggy." She told me, already back to her crazy self.

"Go set some trees on fire, I'd prefer you didn't give off a bad impression to them, at least not at first." She hugged me, and then picked up her flamethrower, setting a few trees on fire with her Semblance. _I hope to god this doesn't become universe doesn't become unstable because of a few trees. There's not really anything to unstabilize I guess. Fallout universe's are kind of hard to have fall since almost everything is dead._

"Awww, what a cute cat!" Yang said with a look of jealousy on her face as we laid together on my bed and looked at funny cat videos.

"They are pretty cute, especially that rusty colored one right there." I said pointing at my Papyrus.

"You think EVERYTHING that is even remotely colored red is cool, or cute." She said, grinning at me.

"That's not always true, sometimes I think yellow is cute too," I said, nuzzling our heads together. _Wow, she smells nice._

"Aw, shucks Crimson. Very smooth." I tapped on another cat video, this time with one that had a small black kitten getting a bath. It looked extremely distressed.

"I try very hard you know." I joked as the kitten mewled in protest.

"I'm sure you do. Even the cat agrees with me! And he looks mighty trustFURRthy too." She said smiling. _Even her puns are funny. I didn't think that was possible. _The door opened and Grey came through with a girl following him.

She was much shorter than Grey, and had grey hair like Grey did as well. Her orange eyes sparkled as she inspected the room. Her grey hair with an orange stripe down the ponytail to match her eyes. The girl also wore business casual clothes; black suit pants, grey dress shirt, as well as a grey and orange striped tie.

"Hey Grey, who's that? Your girlfriend?" Yang asked jokingly.

"Yes, we've been happily together for 6 months now! It's our anniversary." She smiled happily, pulling in Grey for a peck on the cheek. Grey's face reddened in anger, his eyes turning to lilac, and then red.

"This is my SISTER Ashe. She will be... filling in for Hunter as the fourth member of our team." Grey said uncomfortably. _Well I guess it had to happen at some time. I didn't know it would be so soon though._

"It's his fetish, we've been working on it." She said hugging him tightly. Grey looked seriously ticked off by this point.

"She will be introduced to the rest of the school tomorrow in a welcoming party with the first year teams." He informed us as Ashe gripped him tightly.

"Grey has a girlfriend?" Royal asked, curious as she took off her headphones pounding music. Grey finally broke.

"SHE IS MY SISTER, NOT MY GIRLFRIEND!" He teleported out of her grip, onto his bed, fuming. Royal looked genuinely confused as Ashe walked over to the now deceased Hunter's bed, flopping on it.

"She's your sister? Well that would explain the grey hair..."

Grey threw his arms up. "YES! SHE IS MY SISTER! THANK YOU ROYAL!" There was a knock at the door. I looked to my teammates, and sighed, getting up and walking to the door.

"YOU IDIOTS! YOU DO REALIZE PEOPLE ARE TRYING TO SLEEP HERE RIGHT?!" Weiss yelled at me as I opened the door. Yang jumped up off the bed, nudging past me and getting in Weiss' face.

"Weiss, why are you yelling at my boyfriend?" She asked in a serious voice. Weiss stiffened as she realized that pissing off Yang was not the best of ideas. I could see her mind turning, debating whether or not it would be worth it to argue with one of the scariest, but must beatiful people I had ever seen.

Weiss ate her previous words, which I thought was the best decision. "Perhaps I was a little too harsh with my words, I'm... sorry." She struggled with the last word, looking nervous. Yang lightened up.

"Good! Please remember, he IS my boyfriend, and you'll have hell to pay if you upset him!" Yang smiled deceptively sweetly as Ruby popped out behind Weiss.

"Yaaaaang! Are you being mean to Weiss?" She asked her, pouting.

"Nah sis, just defending my boyfriend! We're all good now, right Weiss?" Yang put a grin on her face to emphasize the last part, pulling Ruby, Weiss, and I into a hug. I heard the JNPR door open, and I saw Nora behind them with a happy expression.

"Is someone making pancakes?! I love pancakes!"

"WOAH, YOU LIKE PANCAKES TOO?!" Ashe examined Nora as they both stood in the hallway. _When did she get there? What? _

"Yeah! Do you have pancakes?!" She asked, close to salivating at the mouth.

"Yaaaaang, can you let go now?" Ruby asked her, since we were all still in a group hug. I was enjoying it too much, and Weiss was too scared to ask.

"Never." She pulled us tighter, and I heard Weiss and Ruby make choking noises.

"We don't have any pancakes, which is tragedy to say the least." Ashe said, disappointed at the lack of food and hiding her face in shame.

"REN! COME ON, WE'RE GETTING PANCAKES!" Nora called out to the quiet boy.

"Nora, it's midnight, we can't get pancakes now." He told her with a hint of both tiredness and just a touch of annoyance.

"Yang... I can't... breath..." Ruby said, now seriously asking.

"Oh fine, I see how it is." Yang told us, letting us go. Ruby and Weiss took huge breaths, trying to get air back into their lungs.

"Wait, who are you?" Weiss asked Ashe, looking her up and down.

"I'm the replacement for Hunter. And Grey's girlfriend." Ashe smiled happily as I went back to my bed to lay down. Grey picked up his pillow, and teleported into the hallway while Yang snuggled back up to me and I put on more funny cat videos.

"Do it again, Ashe. I dare you." I heard him say from the hallway. Weiss, Ruby, and even Yang who was fairly stubborn when it came to fights came into our dorm, knowing full well what happened when Grey got pissed off.

_Flashback_

We were eating lunch, and Cardin being the idiot he was decided to mock him for Hunter's death.

"You're that guy who let his friend get killed right?" He called out to him as he ate a peanut butter sandwich. I didn't know to warn him at the time of just how vicious Grey was. Grey put down his sandwich nonchalantly, and flipped the bird towards Cardin over his shoulder.

"What? You want to fight now big man?" Cardin asked him foolishly as his teammates snickered. I was fairly confident that Grey could probably beat them one on four if he needed too, but Royal didn't know just how good Grey was.

"Shut up Cardin, you're a bully and you apparently don't have the brains to realize that Hunter was a better man than you." Royal told him, angry that she had brought up the death of our teammate.

"You bitch! Take that back now!" Cardin yelled as his face reddened in embarrassment.

Grey teleported without warning, and stood in front of him, looming even though he was eye to eye with him.

"You will take back both of your comments, and I will not send you to the infirmary with several broken bones." Cardin spat in his face.

"Never."

_Well I'll give him this, he's very stubborn._ Grey wiped the spit off his cheek, and his eyes turned blue.

"I think I'll make you literally eat your words, Cardin." Grey spat on his sandwich, and Cardin looked confused.

"What makes you think that you can make me eat a sandwich?"

Grey smiled. "This."

Cardin's right arm moved up, seemingly not of his control. He now looked genuinely scared, and I saw him trying to speak as the rest of his team backed off. Grey held out the sandwich, and Cardin jauntingly took it, opening his mouth and mechanically putting it in. Grey't nose started to bleed as he continued this, and Cardin munched on the sandwich.

"And this is for calling Royal a bitch." Cardin's left hand shot out, and punched himself across the face, knocking him to the ground. Cardin jumped up like a puppet, standing on his tip toes, and then started removing his clothes until he hit his underwear.

"Now dance and sing for me Cardin." Grey commanded silently as his nose bled even faster. Cardin started to very badly do the robot, and sing out of tune very badly. Grey slowly took out his scroll, and taped him as he sung Rosy had a little lamb in front of the entire school.

Needless to say, I made a mental note, not ever to piss Grey off.

_End of flashback_

"I said that you're my boy-" I heard a massive 'thwack' outside the dorm and I saw a flash of black and grey careen out of my sight past the open door. There was silence for a second, and then I heard a cry from Ashe.

"DAMMIT GREY! WE'VE TALKED ABOUT THIS, YOU SHOULDN'T BEAT ME UP IN FRONT OF OTHER PEOPLE!" Yang, Ruby, Weiss, and Royal looked at me. I shrugged.

"Who is that?" Ruby asked me as she looked out the door cautiously.

"That is apparently Grey's sister, but I never even knew he had one." _I thought I knew him too, but I guess not._ I heard more the sound of what seemed to be a flail against a pillow, although I wasn't sure.

"GREY STOP WHACKING ME! I ALREADY GOT A RESTRAINING ORDER ON YOU, DO I NEED TO CALL THE COPS!" There was a hushed silence for a second. Everyone strained their ears.

"THAT'S A JOKE! I DO NOT HAVE A RESTRAINING ORDER!"

"WELL NO SHIT, YOU WOULDN'T BE ON THIS TEAM IF YOU DID!"

"This is important, are we, or are we NOT getting pancakes?" Nora asked me, somehow already in the room.

"I know I would love some P-_YANG_-cakes!" Yang commented, grinning. I patted her on the back.

"That could've been better, we'll work on it."

"Oh _Cri_ me a river," she said, teasing me with that dumb nickname.

I was about to retort when I saw a fuming Blake walk out of the RWBY dorm, and walk out of sight towards the whacking noises. They stopped suddenly, and I heard the dragging of a flail on the floor and possibly a pillow. Blake reappeared, dragging a surprisingly happy Grey, and struggling Ashe behind her. She pulled them a little further into the room, and then shut the door forcefully behind her. _Couldn't he have just teleported out?_

"Now, are we getting pancakes or what?!" Nora asked, oblivious to what just happened. We all looked at her for several seconds. She didn't get the hint and continued smiling. I shook my head.

Ruby looked apprehensive, asking Yang, "Are you coming back to the dorm with us now?" Yang looked at me with her big lilac eyes, and then to Ruby.

"Nah, I'll come back in a little. Right now... there are funny cat videos to be watched. Ruby nodded nervously, and Weiss opened the door for Ruby and Nora, who skipped out happily humming some cheerful tune. The door closed and we were left in the silence of kittens.

"What the hell just happened?" Royal asked, perfectly framing my thoughts.

"After what's happened while I've known you guys, this doesn't even phase me anymore." I told her truthfully.

"I've never gotten used to it, and I've been doing crazy shit for the last 7 years." Grey told us, still laying on the floor with Ashe.

"I've had to put up with your shit for the last 17 years, how do you think I feel?" Ashe said unsympathetically.

"Normal, considering the fact that I don't GIVE you any shit." Grey said, teleporting onto his bed with an annoyed sigh, pulling out his scroll.

"What are you talking about? I saw the way you were looking at Blake as we got dragged here. I nearly got killed by the sexual tension." Ashe complained as she clambered onto her own bed. There was more silence for a moment, and then another mewling kitten appeared on the screen to interrupt it.

"So you don't deny it Greggy! You DO like Blake! And I'm still your girlfriend!" Ashe said grinning, trying to rile him up again.

"Alright then! What, is your last name?!" Grey asked her. Her face dimmed, knowing she was beat. Ashe changed the subject.

"So what's that big thing you got there?" Ashe asked me, pointing to the Papyrus on my legs.

"It's the new Papyrus by Schee Technology Co. I won it in a tournament a few days ago." I explained to her.

"So... it's a really big Scroll?" She asked confused. _She doesn't know what a Papyrus is? Well I mean I kind of thought she would know after wearing a suit and tie, I thought she would be an intern or something and have used a Papyrus daily._

"Sure." I answered, not really sure how to respond. The dorm grew silent after a few minutes and felt my eyes grow heavy, and my head slowly fell towards Yang as we watched the videos. _I'll take a small nap, and then continue. _My head rested against Yang's, and I closed my eyes.

I woke up with my head against Yang's, from the commotion between Grey and Ashe.

"You can't wear a suit, it's against Beacon's rules!" Grey pointed out to Ashe as she wore the outfit she had on last night.

"I can wear whatever I damn well please!" She retorted, flailing her arms. Yang had also woken up by this point, and yawned.

"They're still arguing? Do they need to go to marriage counseling or something?" Yang commented as they continued to bicker.

"I think they would have to actually like each other for that to happen." I joked as I kissed Yang on the head, stretching.

"The welcoming party for Ashe is in 10 minutes, I recommend you guys get ready." Royal told us, already ready to go, wearing a purple sleeveless shirt, revealing her weird purple geometric tattoo.

"We better do that then." I agreed, getting off the bed to get dressed.

"See ya later Crimsy!" Yang said, giving me a new nickname and walking out the door. _Well at least it isn't Cri, could be worse._ I exhaled, getting dressed for the party.

_Ozpin's office_

"Qrow, how _did _you figure out that his Semblance was power?" Ozpin asked him as he spun on a single leg of his chair.

"Never reveal your secrets Ozzy, number one rule of being mysterious. I thought especially _you_ of all people would know that. I mean I could've sworn I saw you in that class." Qrow told him smiling. Ozpin put down his mug, with a serious look on his face.

"Mr. Aes has already told me about Tai-yang and how he's a worker, as well as his entire story. I'm going to make an educated guess and say that you are too." Qrow snapped his fingers, finally resting all four legs with his stomach against the back of it, and facing Ozpin.

"Dammit Ozpin, you're so sharp. Kept the secret from you for damn near 30 years. How DO you do it?"

"I'm also assuming that Summer's death had something to do with it?" Ozpin asked rubbing his temples. Qrow's face darkened.

"You're very close, but even I can't tell you that. I can tell you however, that my boss was an idiot for sending that girl here. He likes to mess with us workers, but this is on another level. Put her AND Grey together... Jeez. I will say that the White Fang will not be our biggest problem if they get too riled up."

"Well that's... good to know I think. Just make sure that Crimson does NOT have anyone die near him. I don't want what was apparently a slaughter to happen. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a party to go to." Ozpin told him, walking by him and out the door.

_Party Room_

The beginning of the party was semi-awkward because effectively two thirds of the people there already knew who she was. Not surprisingly, team CRDL did not show up, most likely for fear of Grey. The ones that did not know, Pyrrha, Jaune, and Ren were in for a treat.

"So you're the one that was being... very loud last night." Pyhrra noted slowly as she munched quietly a carrot.

"Yep! Grey was feeling veeeeery stressed last night." Ashe told Pyrrha, causing Pyrrha to smile nervously.

"Crimsy, you there?" Yang asked me as I focused on their conversation.

"Yeah, just got a little distracted." I confessed as I drank some Dusta-Cola from the refreshments they had provided, among other things like chocolate chip cookies and chips.

"If Grey hadn't told me that Ashe was his sister, I never would've guessed." Yang commented.

"Maybe, but they look similar, and both have grey hair. I remember even when I knew him in middle school that he had grey hair as well. I don't think he dyed it like most people." Yang raised an eyebrow.

"That's pretty weird. Weiss dyes her hair white, and if I remember correctly she told me it was normally brown. But you didn't hear me say that. Grey hair at... whatever age they are is preeeety weird."

"Yeah... your sister highlights her hair right?" I asked for confirmation. Yang nodded.

"Our mom had red hair, I think she does it as something to remember her with." Yang noted sadly.

"Oh. Sorry, I had no idea." I said, apologizing sincerely. Yang waved it off.

"Me and Rubes have long gotten over it, don't worry about it." I realized that the conversation had taken a depressing turn, and that we were at a welcoming party.

_Grey POV_

I sat at the far end of the room, away from my obnoxious sister. And most other people. The whispers of people's thoughts grew suddenly, and I saw Jaune in front of me, looking nervous.

"Hi there Grey." He said awkwardly. I nodded, gesturing with my head towards a seat next to me. He sat down next to me and Ren while we played poker with random people on the equivalent of the internet on Remnant.

"You guys don't seem to talk a lot." He mentioned, not getting the hint that we were trying to concentrate on the game while Ren wasn't being assaulted by Nora.

"There isn't a lot of reason to for me," I answered, "What about you Ren?"

"Same." Jaune nodded, again nervously. **I hope he notices me...** I heard Pyrrha's thoughts across the room as she looked at him with near desperation. _Normally Hunter did this sort of thing, but it looks like I'm going to have to break the news. It's been damn near two and a half months and I've had to hear her thoughts for him. _

_It was bad enough the first time. I'll need to contact Desino and see if I can tell him, because it's getting on my nerves. She didn't even confess until the end of the whole White Fang thing and the breach. Still wish that Blake hadn't died. Things might've gone differently then._

"You okay Grey? You like kind of depressed, more than usual actually." Jaune told me anxiously.

"Just... a lot of death in the last few years. Hunter, somebody I really liked, and almost my sister. But that's in the past now, nothing I can do about it now." I told him, and I saw that he was about to ask further. _Shit, I'm going to have to use Suggestion._ I suggested him not to ask further, and his mouth opened and closed, making him look like a fish.

As soon as I was about to change the topic, I felt my right palm grow warm, and I looked at it. _Suggestion shouldn't have set that off, maybe Desino wants to see me? Bastard. _I got up quickly, shoving my hand into my jacket pocket and walked across the room and through the door.

I closed the door behind me and I saw that I was inside Desino's office.

"That was very close Grey, you need to be more careful. I mean you have been doing this for the second longest out of anyone who's worked under me in the Remnant division. You should know to be more careful, than to accidentally let slip who died. I know Blake's death hit you hard the first time, but if all goes accordingly then you should be able to live a happy life." He told me, scribbling in a book.

He was a tall man, and could easily be mistaken for a brother to Ozpin if the two were put side by side. They both had similar glasses, but unlike Ozpin he had jet black hair. Aside from that, they were almost identical aside from his suit.

"You should try sometime, it isn't exactly as easy as I usually make it look. And Blake's death was... bad but I've gotten over that." I convinced me and him.

"As long as you make sure that nothing comes through. That Rogue was especially strong, but you need to kill them with your Radiator's Semblance. You cannot try and kill these 'humanely'." He told me, closing the book and picking up another one without looking up.

"Sir, with all due respect, I might've worked with them at one time or another. I can't just out right kill them." Desino put down his pen and looked up at me with angry eyes.

"You just had your partner killed, and a friend nearly killed by them. Do you honestly think that there is a shred of humanity in them? All they do is exist to disrupt the story like those damned assassins. Seriously, they get NOTHING out of trying to stop it." Desino looked sufficiently pissed at something, but I couldn't tell what.

"Anything else?" I asked him patiently.

"Just make sure that you keep Crimson alive. At this point, we can stand to have a few people die. We need to be able to control him, after that, we can reset." Desino told me, looking back down at his books and waving me off. I nodded, leaving and exiting through the door.

**A/N: This chapter took much longer than I anticipated for a few reasons. (At the bottom for those that don't care)**

**Please remember to follow/favorite, or leave a review! It really helps to know that I am doing something correctly or incorrectly so that I can fix it.**

**Thank you for reading.**

**Reasons:**

**Sadly, my editor Falcyon has taken a break from editing, and probably will not at least for a few more weeks. If anyone would like to edit for hopefully a relatively short time, please PM me.**

**I was able to get most of the chapter edited, but some of it might be a little lacking on it. Normally I would wait and try editing again, but I already did that three times and hopefully there's nothing big.**

**I also had school, which is pretty staggered in terms of work, meaning that I could write without any worry for a few days, but then not be able to write a single word others.**

**Sorry this chapter took so long to get out.**


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